NASA's Parker Solar Probe prepares to fly by the Sun on Christmas Eve
Kyiv • UNN
NASA's Parker Solar Probe will approach the Sun to a record distance of 6.2 million kilometers on December 24. The device will travel at a speed of 690,000 km/h at a shield temperature of 930°C.
NASA's pioneering Parker Solar Probe is preparing for its closest approach to the Sun on Christmas Eve, at a record distance of 6.2 million kilometers from the surface, UNN reports citing France 24.
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Launched in August 2018, the spacecraft is on a seven-year mission to deepen scientific understanding of our star and help predict space weather events that could affect life on Earth.
Its closest approach to date will be on Tuesday, December 24, at 6:53 am (13:53 Kyiv time).
If the distance between the Earth and the Sun is equivalent to the length of an American football field, then at this point the spacecraft will be about four yards (meters) from the end zone.
"This is one example of NASA's bold missions doing what no one else has ever done to answer long-standing questions about our universe," said Arik Posner, Parker Solar Probe program scientist, in a statement.
"We are looking forward to receiving the first status update from the spacecraft and will start receiving scientific data in the coming weeks," he added.
During this closest approach - known as perihelion - mission teams will lose direct communication with Parker, relying on a "beacon signal" this Friday to confirm the spacecraft's status.
While the heat shield will withstand hot temperatures of about 870-930 degrees Celsius, the probe's internal instruments will remain at "room temperature" - 29 degrees Celsius - while it explores the Sun's outer atmosphere, called the corona.
Not only will the temperature be extreme, but the Parker will also travel at an incredible speed of about 690,000 km/h, which is fast enough to fly from the US capital Washington to Tokyo in less than a minute.
"No human-made object has ever passed this close to a star, so Parker will really be returning data from uncharted territory," said Nick Pinkin, Parker Solar Probe mission operations manager at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.
"We are looking forward to hearing from the spacecraft when it circles the Sun again," he said.
By venturing into these extreme environments, Parker is helping scientists solve some of the Sun's biggest mysteries: how the solar wind arises, why the corona is hotter than the surface below it, and how coronal mass ejections - huge clouds of plasma that are ejected through space - are formed.
This Christmas Eve flyby is the first of three record-breaking close flybys; the next two, on March 22, 2025 and June 19, 2025, are expected to bring Parker Solar Probe to the same close distance from the Sun again.
