NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has successfully completed its closest-ever approach to the sun, coming within 3.8 million miles of the solar surface while traveling at an extraordinary speed of 430,000 miles per hour on Christmas Eve.
The spacecraft, which potentially faced temperatures reaching 982C during its daring approach, has sent back a signal confirming it’s “operating normally.” Mission control at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory received the reassuring beacon on Boxing Day evening, with detailed data about the probe’s historic journey expected to arrive on January 1.
Since its 2018 launch, the Parker Solar Probe has been using Venus’s gravity to gradually tighten its orbit around the sun. This innovative mission aims to unlock several solar mysteries, including how solar material reaches millions of degrees in temperature, the origin of solar wind, and how energetic particles achieve near-light speeds.
According to The Journal, the probe has already made significant contributions to solar science, including unexpected discoveries about the sun’s atmospheric boundary when it first entered the corona in 2021.
This latest milestone represents another step forward in humanity’s quest to understand our nearest star, with the probe continuing to push the boundaries of what’s possible in space exploration.