Nasa is preparing to embark on a daring mission to "touch the sun" on Saturday,  aiming to go closer than any other spacecraft has ventured.

The Parker Solar Probe will endure wicked heat while zooming through the solar corona to study this outermost part of the stellar atmosphere that gives rise to the solar wind.

The launch is currently targeted for August 11 at 3:33 a.m. EDT (8.33am BST), with an extended launch window through to August 23.

"To send a probe where you haven’t been before is ambitious. To send it into such brutal conditions is highly ambitious," Nicola Fox, a project scientist from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said.

The mission

The project, with a…