NASA Celebrates as Sun-Exploring Spacecraft Confirms It’s Still Alive

The Parker Solar Probe survived its ace adjacent brushwood with the Sun, resuming connection with its ngo operations squad a fewer days aft its scorching blistery flyby.

NASA’s star probe transmitted a beacon code backmost to Earth conscionable earlier midnight connected Thursday, indicating that the spacecraft is successful bully wellness and operating normally, the abstraction bureau wrote successful a blog update. Parker Solar Probe had gone quiescent during its closest approach connected Tuesday, an expected communications blackout that meant the ngo operations squad would not cognize whether oregon not the spacecraft survived its daring Christmas Eve feat.

The squad tin present remainder casual knowing that the mission’s astir daunting quest was successful. During its closest approach, Parker Solar Probe came wrong conscionable 3.8 cardinal miles (6.1 cardinal kilometers) of the Sun’s surface. At that distance, the star probe broke its ain grounds for closest star attack by a spacecraft. For perspective, Earth is 93 cardinal miles (149 cardinal kilometers) distant from our big star—nearly 25 times farther from the Sun than Parker was connected Tuesday.

During its closest approach, the spacecraft was traveling astatine a record-breaking velocity of 430,000 miles per hr (692,000 kilometers per hour), making it the fastest a human-made entity has ever travelled. During the probe’s closest attack to the burning shot of plasma, it withstood temperatures of astir 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (982.2 degrees Celsius). Because Parker gets truthful adjacent to the Sun, it besides needs an other heavy heat shield to past scorching blistery temperatures.

The ngo is expected to nonstop backmost elaborate telemetry information regarding its presumption connected January 1, 2025, according to NASA. “This close-up survey of the Sun allows Parker Solar Probe to instrumentality measurements that assistance scientists amended recognize however worldly successful this portion gets heated to millions of degrees, hint the root of the star upwind (a continuous travel of worldly escaping the Sun), and observe however energetic particles are accelerated to adjacent airy speed,” NASA wrote successful its blog update. “Previous adjacent passes person helped scientists pinpoint the origins of structures successful the star upwind and representation the outer bound of the Sun’s atmosphere.”

The Parker Solar Probe launched successful August 2018 with a ngo to interaction the Sun. Before Tuesday’s record-breaking brushwood with the star, the spacecraft has carried retired 21 adjacent approaches to the Sun, coming arsenic adjacent arsenic 4.51 cardinal miles (7.26 cardinal km) of the star surface. With each approach, the star probe inched its mode person to the aboveground of the Sun. In November, the Parker Solar Probe carried retired its seventh and last flyby of Venus, mounting it up for its closest attack yet.

This week’s flyby is the archetypal of 3 adjacent approaches to the Sun made astatine the aforesaid distance. Each star brushwood feeds the ngo with precious information astir our big star, which could clarify the analyzable physics of our prima and the mode its dynamic phenomena—from its explosive eruptions to its wind—affects the remainder of the star system.