WASHINGTON (AFP) – National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) pioneering Parker Solar Probe made history by flying closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft, with its heat shield exposed to scorching temperatures topping 930 degrees Celsius (°C).
Launched in August 2018, the spaceship is on a seven-year mission to deepen scientific understanding of our star and help forecast space-weather events that can affect life on Earth.
The historic flyby should have occurred at precisely 6.53am (1153GMT), although mission scientists will have to wait until Friday for confirmation as they lose contact with the craft for several days due to its proximity to the Sun. “Right now, Parker Solar Probe is flying closer to a star than anything has ever been before,” at 6.1 million kilometres away, NASA official Nicky Fox said in a video on social media on Tuesday morning.
“It is just a total ‘yay, we did it,’ moment.”
If the distance between Earth and the Sun is the equivalent to the length of an American football field, the spacecraft should have been about four yards (meters) from the end zone at the moment of closest approach – known as perihelion.
“This is one example of NASA’s bold missions, doing something that no one else has ever done before to answer long-standing questions about our universe,” Parker Solar Probe programme scientist Arik Posner said in a statement.
“We can’t wait to receive that first status update from the spacecraft and start receiving the science data in the coming weeks.”
So effective is the heat shield that the probe’s internal instruments remain near room temperature – around 29°C – as it explores the Sun’s outer atmosphere, called the corona.
Parker will also be moving at a blistering pace of around 690,000 kilometres per hour, fast enough to fly from the United States capital Washington to Japan’s Tokyo in under a minute.
