In a groundbreaking achievement, NASA confirmed on Friday, December 27 that its Parker Solar Probe, after venturing closer to the Sun, is now safe and operating smoothly.
As per Reuters, the Parker Solar Probe came extremely close to the Sun on December 24, within 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers).
The Parker Solar Probe is a major mission within NASA’s Living With a Star Program, which aims to study the Sun and its effect on Earth.
The team at the John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, which is in charge of the Parker Solar probe received a signal (a beacon tone) from the probe just before midnight on Thursday, December 26.
NASA expects the spacecraft to transmit detailed information about its status on January 1.
This data will offer new knowledge and discoveries about solar activity and phenomena.
The agency said in a statement, “This close-up study of the Sun allows Parker Solar Probe to take measurements that help scientists better understand how material in this region gets heated to millions of degrees, trace the origin of the solar wind (a continuous flow of material escaping the Sun), and discover how energetic particles are accelerated to near light speed.”
The Parker Solar Probe, launched in 2018, has been slowly getting closer to the Sun.
