The daring NASA spacecraft achieved its closest-ever visit to the sun at 6:53 a.m. EST (1153 GMT) on Christmas Eve (Dec. 24).
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On Christmas Eve (Dec. 24), a NASA spacecraft made history by getting closer to the sun than any spacecraft ever has before.
This record-breaking achievement was done by the Parker Solar Probe, which traveled to within 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) of the sun, braving the blazing heat of our star's outer atmosphere, the corona.
The flyby, which should have happened at 6:53 a.m. EST (1153 GMT), was the 22nd time Parker had made a near passage to the sun. Though the NASA spaceship is planned to conduct at least two more flybys of the sun, this is the closest it has ever and will ever get near the star. And, to be clear, we say "should have" because NASA had to lose touch with the spacecraft during this flyby; the first indication that Parker survived will arrive on Dec. 27, according to the agency.
Parker is no stranger to breaking records. On Sept. 21, 2023, Parker attained a speed of 394,736 miles per hour (635,266 kilometers per hour) to clinch its title as the fastest object ever made by humans.
During its Christmas Eve flyby, scientists claim the sun-touching spacecraft would have been moving at 430,000 mph (692,000 kph), also exceeding its previously recorded speed record. For reference, that is roughly 300 times faster than the highest speed of a Lockheed Martin jet fighter here on Earth.
This astounding feat of speed could be attained owing to the help of seven gravity "boosts" during Venus flybys, the last of which happened in November 2024.
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The Parker Solar Probe Continues Its Real Purpose
But setting records is merely a result of Parker's core mission: to understand more about the sun. In particular, the spacecraft needs to brave the 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (980 degrees Celsius) temperatures it will face to collect data on the solar corona.
Scientists think this data might assist answer a long-standing puzzle concerning the sun's outer atmosphere, which has tormented scientists for decades. The so-called "coronal heating problem" refers to the fact that, although being further from the sun's major source of energy (its core), the corona is considerably hotter than the sun's surface, the photosphere.
Our traditional model of stars predicts that the closer one gets to the stellar core, where main sequence stars like the sun undertake nuclear fusion to forge hydrogen into helium and release energy, the hotter it gets.
All the layers of the sun seem to stringently fulfill this law – except the corona, which may reach temperatures in excess of 2 million degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 million degrees Celsius). Around 1,000 miles closer to the source of the sun's heat, the photosphere reaches a comparatively pleasant 7,400 degrees Fahrenheit (4,100 degrees Celsius). That's like finding out at Christmas that your chestnuts only cook when you drive them a mile away from an open fire!
Therefore, there must be an additional process heating the solar corona, and scientists are naturally keen to find what it is.
Parker will continue its mission, conducting flybys of the sun on March 22, 2025, and then its final planned flyby will place on June 19, 2025.
During each of these approaches, the spaceship will get virtually as close to the sun as it did on Christmas Eve while moving at a similar speed.
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