NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is set to make a historic approach to the sun’s scorching surface on December 24, getting closer to the sun than any previous human-made spacecraft.

The Parker probe will fly within 3.8 million miles of the sun’s surface, traveling at a speed of approximately 430,000 mph. As it moves through plumes of plasma, the probe will orbit the sun on Tuesday morning, according to a statement from NASA.

During its closest approach, communication with the 110-pound spacecraft — which holds the title of the fastest object ever built by humans — will be temporarily lost. However, the probe will send a beacon signal back to mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Maryland on December 27, allowing the team to assess its condition after the flyby.

“We can’t wait to receive that first status update from the spacecraft and start receiving the science data in the coming weeks,” said Arik Posner, the Parker program scientist.

Launched in 2018 as part of NASA’s Living With a Star initiative, the Parker Solar Probe was designed with the ambitious goal of “touching” the sun. Since then, it has orbited the sun over 20 times, conducting research on the sun’s outermost layer, the corona. This research helps us understand how the sun and solar activity impact life on Earth, including society and technology.

Exploring the corona sheds light on subjects such as space weather and solar wind, which interact with Earth’s magnetic field. These phenomena can damage satellites, disrupt power grids, and intensify the northern lights.

The upcoming flyby marks the first of three planned close approaches in the probe’s final mission stages.

“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, the mission operations manager for the Parker Solar Probe at APL. “We’re excited to hear back from the spacecraft when it swings back around the Sun,” he added.

In 2017, the mission was renamed in honor of American physicist Eugene Parker, making it the first NASA spacecraft to be named after a living person.

Parker made groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of stars in the 1950s, including proposing the existence of solar wind, which he theorized was responsible for the sun’s energy emissions. He also theorized the puzzling temperature discrepancy between the sun’s surface and its much hotter corona.

Eugene Parker passed away in 2022 at the age of 94.

{Matzav.com}