NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is still making history in its rapid orbit around the Sun, and is preparing for another record-breaking approach this week. According to the space agency, at 6:53 a.m. ET on December 24, the spacecraft’s orbit will place it just 3.8 million miles from the sun’s surface. It will be the closest probe to the Sun of that or any other probe. This milestone marks the completion of the Parker Solar Probe’s 22nd orbit around our star, and will be the first of three planned final flybys. the mission. Launched in 2018, the spacecraft is expected to complete a total of 24 orbits.
“No human-made object has ever come this close to its star, so Parker will return data from truly uncharted territory,” said Nick Pinkine, Parker Solar Probe mission operations manager at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. said. NASA’s blog. “We’re excited to hear the response as the spacecraft rotates around the sun again.”
The Parker Solar Probe will be traveling at about 430,000 miles per hour when it passes its closest point. On December 27th, it’s time to get far enough away from the sun to resume communication by sending a ping to check on the team’s status.
