The Parker Solar Probe achieved a historic milestone by surpassing previous records for both proximity to the sun and spacecraft speed.
A NASA probe ventured closer to the sun than any spacecraft in history on Christmas Eve — and it whirled by at astounding speeds that also made it the fastest thing ever made by humans. Just before 7 a.m. on Dec. 24, the Parker Solar Probe passed within just 3.
8 million miles of the sun’s surface — seven times closer to the burning ball of gas than any other mission has gotten,As it skirted the corona — or the sun’s outer atmosphere — it careened through space at a record-breaking 430,000 miles per hour, the outlet said.This broke the probe’s own speed record, making it the quickest thing assembled by human hands. The close encounter is the culmination of a six-year mission that has sent the Parker probe zipping ever closer to the sun during nearly two dozen earlier flybys that have revealed new information about the celestial body. “We really are going into the unknown. Nothing has flown through the atmosphere of a star, and no other mission will for a long time.” The probe’s heat shield — which protects the machinery from temperatures of about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit — has also held up better than scientists expected as it nears the previously unexplored stellar region, the outlet said. The probe — which is the fastest thing ever made by humans — will get within 3.8 million miles of the sun on Christmas Eve.“We feel comfortable that the mission is doing really well, even way better than we designed it,” Nour Rawafi, project scientist at the Applied Physics Laboratory, told The Time
NASA PARKER SOLAR PROBE SPACE EXPLORATION SUN SPEED RECORD
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