NASA’s probe is expected to record the closest approach to the sun

A NASA spacecraft may have set a record, flying closer to the sun than any object sent before.

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

But NASA will be out of touch with the probe for several days, meaning it won’t know if it survived the eclipse until Dec. 27, when Parker will transmit another beam of light to confirm its health, NASA said. on its website.

“No man-made object has ever passed this close to a star, so Parker will be returning data from an unknown location,” Nick Pinkine, Parker Solar Probe mission manager at APL, said on NASA’s website.

“We’re excited to hear from space 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 flown towards the sun’s corona – the outer space visible during a total solar eclipse.

Its purpose is to track the flow of energy, study the heat of the solar corona and test what accelerates the solar wind.

Parker planned to get seven times closer to the sun than the previous spacecraft, which hit a speed of 690,000 km/h on approach.

Its instruments are protected from the sun by an 11.43-centimeter composite carbon shield, which can withstand temperatures up to about 1,377 C.

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 surface of the sun and what drives the solar wind, the stream of burning particles that constantly explode away from the sun.