The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said Friday that its Parker solar probe was “safe” and operating normally after successfully completing the closest approach to the Sun of any man-made object.
The spacecraft passed just 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) from the Sun’s surface on Dec. 24, flying into the Sun’s outer atmosphere called the corona, on a mission to help scientists learn more. about the star closest to Earth.
The agency said the operations team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland received the signal, a beacon tone, from the probe just before midnight Thursday.
The spacecraft is expected to send detailed telemetry data about its status on January 1, NASA added.
Moving at up to 430,000 mph (692,000 kph), the spacecraft endured temperatures of up to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (982 degrees Celsius), according to NASA’s website.
“This close-up study of the Sun allows Parker Solar Probe to take measurements that help scientists better understand how material in this region is heated to millions of degrees, trace the origin of the solar wind (a continuous flow of material escaping of the Sun), and discover how energetic particles accelerate until they reach the speed close to that of light,” the agency added.
The Parker Solar Probe launched in 2018 and has been circling gradually closer to the sun, using flybys of Venus to gravitationally pull it into a closer orbit with the sun.