The Parker solar probe becomes the device that has flown closest to the Sun

The device, which left Earth in 2018, must provide new data around January 1.

Parker was hot but she is doing well. Sent by NASA as close as possible to the Sun, this solar probe transmitted a sound signal to Earth letting people know that it was still in working order, the American space agency reported on Friday, December 27, in a message published on its website.

On Tuesday, the device achieved the feat of approaching the star at the center of our solar system just 6.1 million km from its surface, exposing itself to a temperature of 982°C, reported the dedicated site to this mission.

A distance that may seem immense, but is actually not much on the scale of our solar system, the director of NASA’s scientific missions explained to the BBC.. “We are 93 million kilometers from the Sun, so if I put the Sun and Earth one meter apart, the Parker Solar Probe is 4 cm from the Sun. So it’s close.”

The device, sent to uncover, among other things, the secrets of the solar corona, must provide new data on January 1st. “Studying the Sun so closely allows the Parker Solar Probe to take measurements that help scientists better understand how matter in this region is heated to millions of degrees, tracing the origin of the solar wind (a continuous flow of matter escaping from the Sun) and to discover how energetic particles are accelerated to a speed close to that of light”explained the agency on its website.

Since its launch in 2018, the probe has orbited the Sun, getting closer and closer to the star, entering its atmosphere in 2021. “No man-made object has ever passed this close to a star, so Parker will truly bring back data from uncharted territory,” enthused the head of mission operations for the applied physics laboratory at John Hopkins University, Nick Pinkine, earlier this week, “impatient” to have news of the probe. In 2023, the probe had approached the surface of the Sun 8.5 million kilometers from the surface, already making it possible to observe the birth of solar winds.