Can We Travel to the Sun?

The sun rises over the Atlantic Ocean at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, illuminating space shuttle Atlantis' external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters on Launch Pad 39A. Launch is scheduled to take place for the STS-135 mission on July 8, 2011. This image was taken on June 23, 2011. CREDIT: NASA/Jim Grossmann View full size image

In theory, we could. But the trip is long — the sun is 93 million miles (about 150 million kilometers) away — and we don’t have the technology to safely get astronauts to the sun and back yet.

And if we did, it’d be pretty hot. The sun’s surface is about 6,000 Kelvin, which is 10,340 degrees Fahrenheit (5,726 degrees Celsius).

The sun would melt anything that got near it. But we can send robotic probes toward the sun and even around it. Today, many unmanned solar telescopes keep a constant watch on the sun to monitor its behavior and weather patterns.

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