On Christmas Eve, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe set a new record by approaching the sun’s surface within barely 3.86 million miles (6.1 million kilometers). Parker’s historic moment can be followed on NASA’s Eyes On The Solar System page.
On Tuesday, December 24, a fully armored NASA spacecraft, barely larger than a tiny car, became the closest man-made object to the sun in history, marking one of humanity’s most amazing space exploration achievements. In addition, the fastest item ever created by humans broke its speed record, and humanity made its closest visit to a star ever.
A Monumental Performance
At 11:53 UTC (6:53 a.m. EST) on Tuesday, December 24, Parker accomplished an unprecedented close flyby of the sun, coming within barely 3.86 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) of its surface. This was a tremendous accomplishment of exploration. It had come this near to the sun 22 times.
It is the closest man-made object to the sun ever, at 96% of the distance between the sun and Earth, well within Mercury’s orbit at roughly 39%.
The project’s scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Dr. Nour Raouafi, compares the importance of this mission to the 1969 moon landing. During a media roundtable at the annual conference of the American Geophysical Union on December 10, 2024, he declared, “It’s the moment we have been waiting for for nearly 60 years.” “In 1969, we landed humans on the moon. On Christmas Eve, we embrace a star — our star.”
‘Hyper-Close’
Parker will slice through plasma plumes that are still attached to the sun in what NASA refers to as a “hyper-close regime,” getting close enough to pass inside a solar outburst “like a surfer diving under a crashing ocean wave.”
According to Raouafi, the heat Parker will experience when it is closest to the sun is “nearly 500 times the hottest summer day we can witness on Earth.”
Parker was already the fastest thing ever constructed on Earth, but it will surpass all previous records for speed and distance when it approaches the sun at 430,000 mph (690,000 kph). The mission’s website states that it would take one second to go from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C.
On December 27, 2024, mission operators at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, will wait for a beacon tone to certify the probe’s survival after losing touch with it for three days.
On March 22 and June 19, 2025, Parker will make two additional hyper-close passes at the same distance.