NASA’s probe is expected to make history with its closest approach to the sun

A NASA spacecraft may have made history as it flew closer to the Sun than any other object sent before.

The Parker Solar Probe was on track to fly about 6.1 million kilometers from the sun’s surface at 6:53 a.m. ET Tuesday

But NASA won’t be in contact with the probe for several days, meaning it won’t know whether it survived the sunpass until Dec. 27, when Parker is due to send another beacon tone to confirm its health, NASA said on its website.

“No human object has ever passed this close to a star, so Parker will really be returning data from uncharted territory,” Nick Pinkine, Parker Solar Probe mission operations manager at APL, said on NASA’s website.

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“We’re excited to hear back from the spacecraft as it orbits the Sun.”

The Parker Solar Probe was launched in 2018 to take a closer look at the sun. Since then, it has been flying straight through the Sun’s corona — the outer atmosphere visible during a total solar eclipse.

Its purpose is to monitor the flow of energy, study the heating of the Sun’s corona, and investigate what accelerates the solar wind.

Parker planned to come more than seven times closer to the sun than previous spacecraft, reaching speeds of 690,000 km/h on closest approach.

A Delta IV rocket, carrying the Parker Solar Probe, lifts off from Launch Complex 37 at the Kennedy Space Center, Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018, in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Parker Solar Probe will venture closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft and is protected by a first-of-its-kind heat shield and other innovative technologies that will provide unprecedented information about the Sun. — A Delta IV rocket, carrying the Parker Solar Probe, lifts off from Launch Complex 37 at the Kennedy Space Center on August 12, 2018, in Cape Canaveral, Florida. (John Raoux/The Associated Press)

Its instruments are protected from the sun by a 11.43 centimeter composite shield that can withstand temperatures of nearly 1377C.

It will continue to orbit the sun at this distance until at least September.

Scientists hope to better understand why the corona is hundreds of times hotter than the sun’s surface, and what drives the solar wind, the supersonic stream of charged particles constantly moving away from the sun.

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