For the first time in history, a spacecraft has “touched” the sun, scientists announced Tuesday.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has flown through the sun’s upper atmosphere – the corona – and sampled particles and magnetic fields there. The news was announced during a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
“Fascinatingly exciting,” said project scientist Nour Raouafi of Johns Hopkins University.
Parker Solar Probe launched in 2018 to explore the mysteries of the sun by traveling closer to it than any spacecraft before. Three years after launch and decades after first conception, Parker has finally arrived.
The probe flew through the corona in April during the spacecraft’s eighth close approach to the sun. Scientists said it took a few months to get the data back, and then several more months to confirm.
The mission “is a monumental moment for solar science and a truly remarkable feat,” said NASA’s Thomas Zurbuchen.
At closest approach to the sun, the front of the probe’s solar shield endured temperatures approaching 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
“Not only does this milestone provide us with deeper insights into our sun’s evolution and its impacts on our solar system, but everything we learn about our own star also teaches us more about stars in the rest of the universe,” Zurbuchen said in a statement.
The $1.6-billion mission also aims to improve forecasts of major space weather events that impact life on Earth, as well as astronauts in space, NASA said. Space weather can change the orbits of satellites, shorten their lifetimes or interfere with onboard electronics.
As it circles closer to the solar surface, Parker is making new discoveries that other spacecraft were too far away to see, including from within the solar wind – the flow of particles from the sun that can influence us here on Earth.
Parker will keep drawing ever closer to the sun and diving deeper into the corona until its grand finale orbit in 2025.
The mission was named after Eugene Newman Parker, a physicist who proposed a number of concepts about how stars give off energy.
Contributing: The Associated Press
