The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is mulling over sending its first robotic spacecraft to the Sun, next year.

The robotic spacecraft is slated to get within six million kilometres of the blazing star to probe its atmosphere.

After successful missions to the Moon, Mars and even distant interstellar space, NASA now plans to launch the Solar Probe Plus mission to the Sun, which is around 149 million kilometres from the Earth.

"This is going to be our first mission to fly to the Sun," said Eric Christian, a NASA research scientist at Goddard Space Flight Centre, according to PTI.

NASA has designed an 11.4 centimetres carbon-composite shield, which is designed to withstand temperatures outside the spacecraft of 1,370 degrees Celsius.

The unmanned probe will have special heat tubes called thermal radiators that will radiate heat that permeates the heat shield to open space, "so it does not go to the instruments, which are sensitive to heat," Christian added.

"We can't get to the very surface of the Sun," but the mission will get close enough to answer three important questions, Christian said.

The 3 important questions that scientists hope the mission will answer:

1. Why is the surface of the Sun, called the photosphere, not as hot as its atmosphere, called the corona?

According to NASA, the surface temperature of the Sun is only about 5,500 degrees Celsius. However, the atmosphere above it is a sizzling two million degrees Celsius.

"You would think the farther away you get from a heat source, you would get colder. Why the atmosphere is hotter than the surface is a big puzzle," Christian said.

3. Where does solar wind gets its speed from?

"The Sun blows a stream of charged particles in all directions at a million miles an hour. But we do not understand how that gets accelerated," he said, regarding the second question about the sun, Livescience reported.

3. Why does the sun occasionally emit high energy particles?

The scientists at NASA hope that the mission may also solve the mystery regarding why the Sun occasionally emits high-energy particles that are a danger to unprotected astronauts and spacecraft.

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