Nasa reveals important update on Parker spacecraft’s historic closest-ever approach to the Sun days after daring mission
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The Parker Solar Probe is safe and functioning normally after completing the closest-ever pass of the Sun by any human-made object, Nasa has announced. The daring spacecraft flew just 3.8million miles (6.1mkm) from the Sun's surface on 24 December. That might sound like a lot, but it's a stone's throw given that the Sun is 91.4 million miles from Earth.
Parker endured temperatures of up to 982C (1,800F) as it dipped into the Sun's outer atmosphere, while moving at up to 430,000mph (692,000k/ph). Nasa launched Parker back in 2018 to examine our local star, in hopes it would reveal more about solar activity.
The nail-biting mission took the Parker probe out of communications range with experts on Earth. The operations team at the Johns Hopkins University applied physics laboratory in Maryland received the signal from the probe shortly before midnight on Thursday.
The signal, a "beacon tone", confirmed the probe survived the trip. In a statement, Nasa said: “This closeup study of the sun allows Parker solar probe to take measurements that help scientists better understand how material in this region gets heated to millions of degrees, trace the origin of the solar wind (a continuous flow of material escaping the sun), and discover how energetic particles are accelerated to near light speed.”.
