NASA's Parker Solar Probe Breaks Record on Christmas Eve

NASA is ending the year by accomplishing a record-breaking mission. On Christmas Eve, NASA's Parker Solar Probe flew 3.8 million miles above the sun's surface at a historic 430,000 miles per hour. The agency announced the news on Friday, Dec. 27, a day after it received a beacon tone confirming that the spacecraft had safely survived the encounter and continued operating normally.

According to the agency's blog post, the mission operations team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., received the signal just before midnight EST on the night of Dec. 26. It is expected to send back detailed telemetry data on its status on Jan. 1.

The probe was launched in 2018 and first entered the solar atmosphere in 2021. Its latest achievement comes six months after the probe completed its 20th close approach to the sun, coming about 4.51 million miles from the solar surface and moving at about 394,736 miles per hour in June.

Results from the latest mission will help scientists get a better understanding of how the material in the solar 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," according to NASA.

The agency noted that previous missions have helped scientists "pinpoint the origins of structures in the solar wind and map the outer boundary of the sun’s atmosphere."

"Flying this close to the Sun is a historic moment in humanity’s first mission to a star," Nicky Fox, NASA Associate Administrator, Science Mission Directorate, said of the probe's latest achievement.

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