NASA has revealed a major update after they've broken records in space.
According to the space agency, its spacecraft broke the record for being a human-made invention being the closest ever to the surface of the sun.
On 24 December, the Parker Solar Probe was able to come within 3.8 million miles of the sun’s surface at amazing speeds of 430,000 miles per hour, according to NASA.
The craft aimed to touch the Sun by flying through its weakest atmosphere, also known as the corona, which reaches temperatures of 982C.
Advert
The team at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Maryland, US found out that the craft had broken the record for closest encounter to the ball of flames when it gave the all clear to the team on Christmas Eve, telling them that it had touched the Sun.
It was so fast to do its job that the team didn’t even expect to hear from it until 27 December, making it three days early on its flight plan.
Nasa said: “Following its record-breaking closest approach to the sun, Nasa’s Parker Solar Probe has transmitted a beacon tone back to Earth indicating it’s in good health and operating normally.”
Thanks to the data it will have collected from the atmosphere, scientists hope that it will allow them more information on how material is heated to millions of degrees, what is going on with where solar wind comes from, and they hope to learn how energetic particles reach near light speeds once flung into space.
It had to pass Venus seven times in order to use the planet’s gravity to move it into a tighter orbit, which launched it to the Sun, where it passed 21 times and touched it on the 22nd attempt.
“No human-made object has ever passed this close to a star, so Parker will truly be returning data from uncharted territory,” said Nick Pinkine, Parker Solar Probe mission operations manager at APL.
Pinkine added: "We’re excited to hear back from the spacecraft when it swings back around the Sun."
The mission hopes to ‘take measurements that help scientists better understand how material in this region gets heated to millions of degrees, trace the origin of the solar wind (a continuous flow of material escaping the Sun) and discover how energetic particles are accelerated to near light speed,’ states the website.
Dr Nicola Fox, Nasa’s head of science, told BBC News: “For centuries, people have studied the Sun, but you don’t experience the atmosphere of a place until you actually go (and) visit it.
“And so we can’t really experience the atmosphere of our star unless we fly through it.
“We are 93 million miles away from the Sun, so if I put the Sun and the Earth one metre apart, Parker Solar Probe is 4cm from the Sun – so that’s close.”
Dr Fox added: “I will worry about the spacecraft. But we really have designed it to withstand all of these brutal, brutal conditions. It’s a tough, tough little spacecraft.”
They’ll know more on 1 January once the probe delivers a comprehensive data report, which could help scientists understand the Sun more in-depth.
Topics: James Webb Space Telescope, NASA, Science, Space, Technology
Britt Jones