By BlueShift and AFP | 2024-12-27

After making history flying closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft, NASA's pioneering Parker Solar Probe has transmitted a beacon tone back to Earth indicating it is in good health and operating normally.

The mission operations team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, received the signal December 26, just before midnight EST, NASA said in a blog post.

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.

NASA, on the Parker Solar Probe's website, describes its mission as "to touch the Sun."

On 21 previous solar flybys, its perihelion has kept coming closer to the Sun.

Parker made its nearest approach yet to the Sun on December 24, with its heat shield exposed to scorching temperatures topping 1,700°F (930°C).

Parker was "zipping just 3.8 million miles from the solar surface while moving about 430,000 miles per hour," NASA said.

That is fast enough to fly from Washington, DC, to Tokyo, Japan, in under a minute, AFP calculated.

The probe and its instruments are protected from the Sun by a 4.5-inch (11.43cm)-thick carbon-composite shield, which can withstand temperatures reaching almost 2,500°F (1,377°C).

So effective is the heat shield that the probe's internal instruments remain near room temperature -- around 85°F (29°C) -- as it explores the Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona.

"Right now, Parker Solar Probe is flying closer to a star than anything has ever been before," NASA official Nicky Fox said in a video on social media December 24.

Uncharted territory

"No human-made object has ever passed this close to a star, so Parker will truly be returning data from uncharted territory," Nick Pinkine, mission operations manager at the Johns Hopkins APL, said in a statement December 20.

The historic flyby December 24 should have occurred at precisely 6:53am EST, although mission scientists had to wait for confirmation as they lost contact with the craft for several days due to its proximity to the Sun.

The spacecraft is expected to send back detailed telemetry data on its status on January 1, according to NASA.

"This is one example of NASA's bold missions, doing something that no one else has ever done before to answer longstanding questions about our universe," said Arik Posner, Parker Solar Probe program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

By venturing into these extreme conditions, Parker has been helping scientists tackle some of the Sun's biggest mysteries: how solar wind originates, why the corona is hotter than the surface below and how coronal mass ejections -- massive clouds of plasma that hurl through space -- are formed.

The Christmas Eve flyby is the first of three record-setting close passes, with the next two -- on March 22 and June 19, 2025 -- both expected to bring the probe to a similarly close distance from the Sun.

The mission aims to help scientists understand the Sun's impact on Earth.

"Data from Parker will be key to understanding and, perhaps, forecasting space weather," NASA said on its webpage dedicated to the spacecraft. "Space weather can change the orbits of satellites, shorten their lifetimes or interfere with onboard electronics."

Johns Hopkins APL designed, built and operates the spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA.