the Parker probe makes a historic pass near the sun

The Parker space probe has approached the surface of the Sun like no other probe has done before. And it is in good condition.

The Parker space probe survived its passage near the Sun. After the closest passage ever made of an object of human origin in front of the Sun, on Christmas Eve, the probe sent a signal to Earth for the first time on Friday.

“Parker sent a signal back to Earth indicating that it is in good condition and functioning normally,” wrote the American space agency NASA on the mission blog. The signal was received by mission coordinators at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland on the night of December 26 to 27, after 48 hours of waiting.

The probe reached its closest point to the Sun on December 24 at 12:53 p.m. Swiss time. It came as close as no other probe had before to the surface of the Sun, 6.1 million kilometers away.

The fastest ever built

The data will only be available at the end of January, when the probe’s main antenna points towards Earth, said astrophysicist Volker Bothmer of the University of Göttingen a few days before the flyby: “but it will take several years before we have evaluated and understood all the data.

According to NASA calculations, the small-car-sized probe had a speed of about 690,000 kilometers per hour at its closest point to the Sun and could withstand temperatures of about 1,000 degrees Celsius.

It would have flown faster than any other object built by man to date. To protect its instruments, it has a thermal shield 11.4 centimeters thick, composed mainly of carbon. According to NASA data, it is even designed to withstand a temperature of around 1400 degrees. (ats)

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