NASA said Friday that it received a signal from the Parker Solar Probe confirming that the spacecraft had survived its closest flyby of the sun to date. The approach resulted in it traveling just 3.8 million miles from the surface, passing within the solar corona and enabling unprecedented data collection around a star. A few million miles seems like a pretty big distance, but to put things into perspective: NASA explains: “If the solar system were shrunk to the length of a football field with the distance between the Sun and Earth, Parker Solar Probe would be just four meters from the end zone.”
The probe’s current orbit brings it closest to the sun about every three months. It will return for two more flybys in 2025, on March 22 and June 19. The probe is expected to soon report data from its recent approach once it is in a better location. “The data that will come from the spacecraft will be new information about a place we as humanity have never been before,” said Joe Westlake, the director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters. “It’s an amazing achievement.”
