(Reuters) – The Parker Solar Probe, the first device to come as close as possible to the Sun, is “safe” and operating normally, NASA announced on Friday.
This probe passed just 6.1 million kilometers from the Sun’s surface on December 24, entering its outer atmosphere, called the corona, as part of a mission to deepen scientists’ knowledge of the star. closer to Earth.
According to NASA, the team from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland received the signal, a beacon tone, from the probe shortly before midnight on Thursday.
The probe should send detailed telemetry data on its status on January 1, NASA added.
Traveling at a speed of 692,000 km/h, the probe experienced temperatures reaching 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (982 degrees Celsius), according to the NASA website.
“This close study of the Sun allows Parker Solar Probe to take measurements that help scientists better understand how matter in this region is heated to millions of degrees, trace the origin of the solar wind (a continuous flow of material escaping from the Sun) and to discover how energetic particles are accelerated to a speed close to that of light”, writes the American space agency.
The Parker Solar Probe was launched in 2018 and has gradually moved closer to the sun, flying past Venus to gravitationally pull it into an orbit closer to the Sun.
(Reporting Bipasha Dey and Shubham Kalia in Bangalore; French version Claude Chendjou, editing by Kate Entringer)
