Record close to the sun
The Parker Solar Probe spacecraft reports perfect condition
Updated on January 4, 2025 – 12:32 p.mReading time: 3 min.
The probe flew closer to the Sun than any object has ever flown before. NASA has now announced that their systems survived extreme heat and speed unscathed.
The “Parker Solar Probe” probe successfully completed its flyby of the sun at an unprecedented close. Both the probe’s systems and scientific instruments are intact and functioning normally, the US space agency Nasa said.
“Parker Solar Probe” flew deep into the sun’s atmosphere on December 24th, reaching previously unexplored regions. According to NASA calculations, the probe, which was the size of a small car, came within around six million kilometers of the sun’s surface.
According to NASA, on its record-breaking flight it reached a speed of around 690,000 kilometers per hour, making it fly faster than any other object built by humans to date. A thick heat shield protected the spacecraft and the instruments mounted on it. During its closest approach to the Sun, research teams on Earth had no contact with the probe.
“Although Parker Solar Probe was closer to the Sun than any other man-made object in history, it performed exactly as planned and made observations that no one had ever been able to make before,” said Helene Winters, Project manager for “Parker Solar Probe” in the operations center of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) was quoted in a statement.
“From the heat shield to the solar array’s cooling system, so many technologies were required to fly this mission and collect data that scientists have been waiting for decades. Parker Solar Probe’s ability to survive in the Sun’s hostile environment “, is a credit to the team that designed and built this remarkable probe,” said Winters.
Astrophysicist Volker Bothmer from the University of Göttingen told the German Press Agency: “We were able to carry out all the scientific measurements we programmed with our camera and other instruments on board the space probe and will receive the unique new data at the end of January when the main antenna heads towards Earth shows.” Bothmer leads the German participation in the mission and, among other things, helped develop its concept and a wide-angle camera.
The astrophysicist had already explained in advance that it would take a few years until all the data was evaluated and understood.
The “Parker Solar Probe Mission” is intended, among other things, to provide insights into why the sun’s outer atmosphere is many times hotter than its surface. This should also help to understand how the atmospheres of other stars work. It is also about the question of how solar currents are generated in the sun’s atmosphere and how solar wind or solar storms arise.
The probe, which was launched in 2018, is named after the US astrophysicist Eugene Parker, who, according to NASA, presented a mathematical theory on the existence of the solar wind as a young man in the 1950s. This is a stream of charged particles that the sun constantly sends into space. Parker died in 2022 at the age of 94. According to NASA, he was the first person to witness the launch of a probe that bears his name.