Space probe survives flyby of the sun

A NASA space probe has survived a flyby of the sun. Early this morning, the spacecraft contacted Earth again, confirming that the Parker Solar Probe had survived the journey. The scientific data collected by the probe will not be transmitted until the new year.

The probe came within 6.1 million kilometers of our star, flying through the outermost layer of the sun, the corona. No man-made object has ever come closer. The old record was held by the Helios probe since 1976, which only came within 42 million kilometers. For comparison: Earth itself is about 150 million kilometers from the sun.

On this journey past the sun, the probe had to deal with temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees Celsius and extreme doses of radiation that could have been fatal to the instruments on board. Parker shot into this area on Christmas Eve at a speed of 692,000 kilometers per hour. With this, the probe also set the record for the fastest man-made object.

Orbits around Venus

NASA launched the Parker Solar Probe in 2018 and since then it has flown in an orbit around Venus ever closer to the sun. Scientists hope that this space mission will help them learn more about the workings of the sun, the processes in the corona and the origin of the solar wind.

During its orbits around Venus, the probe also collected new information about the planet. For example, scientists were able to look through the planet’s thick cloud cover using infrared light.