NASA's probe has touched the Sun, setting two records. It's still unclear if it survived the encounter. (Watch the video)

On December 24, 2024, at 1:53 PM Kyiv time, an event eagerly awaited by NASA scientists took place. The solar probe "Parker" achieved what no other probe has accomplished in the entire history of space exploration. The NASA spacecraft came closer to the Sun than any previous probe and reached the highest speed ever recorded, as reported by Space.

New Records Set by the "Parker" Solar Probe

Initially, it's important to note that NASA scientists cannot yet confirm whether the "Parker" solar probe survived, as contact was lost during its closest approach to the Sun. Evidence of its survival will only be available on December 27.

Nevertheless, scientists believe that the spacecraft managed to break its own records:

• The "Parker" solar probe came within 6.1 million kilometers of the Sun, flying through the scorching solar corona (with temperatures reaching over a million degrees), which is the outer part of our star's atmosphere;
• The "Parker" solar probe traveled at a speed of 692,000 km/h, approximately 300 times faster than military jet fighters.

Since 2018, the NASA probe has approached the Sun 22 times and is expected to make at least two more close encounters in 2025: on March 22 and June 19. It is anticipated that it will maintain a similar speed, although it may be slightly farther from the Sun.

No spacecraft in history has been this close to our star or reached such high speeds. The "Parker" solar probe became the fastest artificial object on September 21, 2023, when it reached a speed of 635,266 km/h.

According to NASA scientists, they hope to receive confirmation in a few days that the record-setting probe survived the close encounter with the Sun and will be able to clarify the record metrics for distance and speed. For instance, it was anticipated that the "Parker" solar probe could reach speeds of 700,000 km/h during its close approach to the Sun on December 24.

The Sun's Secrets to be Unraveled by the "Parker" Solar Probe

Setting records is merely a byproduct of a much more important mission for the NASA probe. Scientists hope that the probe's instruments collected new data about the solar corona during its very close flyby of the Sun.

This data is expected to help solve the long-standing mystery of the Sun's corona: why its temperature exceeds 1 million degrees Celsius, even though it is much farther from the star's core, where the temperature is around 5,500 degrees Celsius?

The standard model of stars suggests that the closer a layer is to the core, which generates energy through nuclear fusion, the hotter it is. All layers of the Sun follow this rule, except for the corona. It lies approximately 1.5 million kilometers farther from the core than the surface of the Sun and is still extremely hot. This implies that there must be some mechanism that heats the solar corona.