NASA makes history, spacecraft survives closest approach to the Sun ever

A NASA spacecraft has made history by surviving its closest approach to the Sun ever.

Scientists received a signal from the Parker Solar Probe shortly before midnight on Thursday, after it had been out of communication for several days during its flyby.

NASA announced that the spacecraft is now "safe" and operating normally after passing 6.1 million km from the solar surface.

The probe reportedly plunged into our star's outer atmosphere on Christmas Eve, enduring brutal temperatures and extreme radiation in a quest to better understand how the Sun works.

NASA then waited nervously for a signal, he writes with the BBC, the Telegraph reports.

Traveling at up to 692,000 km/h, the spacecraft endured temperatures of up to 980 degrees Celsius, according to NASA.

"This close-up study of the Sun allows Parker to take measurements that help scientists better understand how material in this region is heated to millions of degrees and trace the origin of the solar wind," the space agency said.

Dr. Nicola Fox, head of science at NASA, said: "For centuries, people have studied the Sun, but you don't really experience the atmosphere of a place until you go and visit it."

"And so we can't really experience our star's atmosphere unless we fly through it," Fox added.

The Parker spacecraft was reportedly launched in 2018, heading towards the center of our solar system.

It had already passed the Sun 21 times, getting closer and closer, but the visit on Christmas Eve was a record.

At its closest approach, the probe was 6.1 million km from the surface of our star.

That may not sound that close, but Dr. Fox put it into perspective. "If you put the Sun and Earth a meter apart, Parker is 4cm from the Sun - so it's close."

The probe was protected by a 11.5 cm thick carbon shield, but the spacecraft's tactic was to get in and out quickly.

In fact, it moved faster than any man-made object.

Parker's speed comes from the huge gravitational pull it felt as it fell toward the Sun.

So why go to all this effort to "touch" the Sun?

Scientists hope that as the spacecraft passes through our star's outer atmosphere – its corona – it will have gathered data that will solve a long-standing mystery.

"Corona is really, really hot, and we have no idea why," said Dr. Jennifer Millard, astronomer at Fifth Star Laboratories in Wales.

“The surface of the Sun is about 6,000 C or so, but the corona, this tenuous outer atmosphere that you can see during solar eclipses, reaches millions of degrees – and that's further away from the Sun. So, how is that atmosphere heating up," she continued.

The mission is also expected to help scientists better understand the solar wind – the constant stream of charged particles blasting from the corona.

When these particles interact with Earth's magnetic field, the sky lights up with dazzling auroras.

But this so-called space weather can also cause problems, knocking out power grids, electronics and communications systems.

"Understanding the Sun, its activity, space weather, the solar wind, is so important to our daily life on Earth," said Dr. Millard. /Telegraph/