A NASA spacecraft has made a lightning-fast pass through the sun’s outer atmosphere.

The Parker Solar Probe, protected by a powerful heat shield, ventured closer to the sun than any spacecraft before it, coming within 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) of the sun’s surface—seven times closer than any other probe has managed. This mission aims to explore the sun’s corona, the outermost part of its atmosphere, which plays a significant role in generating solar storms and weather patterns that can affect Earth.

In order to gain insights into the sun’s behavior, a spacecraft had to venture where none had gone before.

“It’s really exciting,” said Nour Raouafi, an astrophysicist from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and project scientist for the mission, in an interview with Mashable. “The sun is like a laboratory to us.”

Although NASA made the announcement of the spacecraft’s historic flyby tonight, the Parker Solar Probe is scheduled to send a confirmation tone back to Earth on December 27, ensuring its safe passage.

To achieve this record-breaking approach, the probe has completed 22 orbits around the sun, gradually diving deeper into the corona. With each orbit, the spacecraft has picked up additional speed. As it repeatedly passes a giant gravitational object like the sun—whose mass is 333,000 times that of Earth—the spacecraft accelerates. In the vacuum of space, there’s nothing to slow it down.

During this close pass, the spacecraft reached a speed of approximately 430,000 miles per hour.

“It’s the fastest human-made object ever.”

“That’s like going from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. in one second,” Raouafi exclaimed in awe. “It’s fascinating. It’s the fastest human-made object ever.”

{Matzav.com}