Nasa is aiming to get closer to the Sun than ever before, with plans to plunge a car-sized unmanned spacecraft into the star's outer atmosphere.
Scientists hope to launch the Solar Probe Plus (SPP) sometime before 2018.
Before it is destroyed by the sizzling temperatures exceeding 1,400C (2,550F), the craft will have to obtain valuable data about our parent star.
The solar probe project is expected to cost in the region of about $180m (£120m).
To withstand the temperatures and the radiation, the instruments will be protected by a huge carbon-composite heat shield that still needs to be built.
Researchers say that the Sun is one of the few places people have not yet sent a spacecraft.
"Trying to understand how the Sun influences the Earth is quite a big thing these days," Richard Harrison, a solar physicist from the UK's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, told BBC News.
"The one thing we've never done is actually go there. You think of a spacecraft flying past Mars or Venus, but with the Sun, it is a little bit different.
"[But we are capable of sending] spacecraft near the Sun and that's the plan for the next generation of spacecraft".
BBC News
