Humanity has just embraced the Sun

This Christmas Eve, the Solar Parker probe, from the North American space agency NASA, “touched” the Sun, flying closer to our star than any other spacecraft so far. On Friday, we will know if he survived the feat.

NASA’s daring spacecraft made history: this morning, at 11:53 am, it was at the smallest distance that an object built by Humanity has ever been from our star.

At its closest point to the Sun, just 6.1 million kilometers away, the Parker Solar Probe endured scorching temperatures from 1.700°C.

At this point, the intrepid spacecraft was within the Sun’s upper atmosphere, “literally touching the star“, said to NASA’s deputy director of heliophysics, Nicki Rayl.

This was the 22nd time Parker has made a close pass to the sun. The NASA spacecraft is expected to make at least two more passes, but this is the closest it has ever been and will be to the star.

And to be clear, we say “wait” because during the flyby NASA had to lose contact with the spacecraft. The first proof that Parker survived will arrive on December 27th, explains .

To avoid the tragic fate of Icarusthe Greek mythological figure whose wax-bonded wings melted as he approached the Sun, the spacecraft is equipped with a heat shield which keeps its sensitive instruments just above room temperature, at around 30°C.

This 4.5 centimeter thick protective layer was constructed after more than a decade of researchexplains to .

The system of water cooling, with carbon foam layers insulation and a coating of glossy white ceramic paint to reflect the worst of the heat give the probe its invulnerability to the glare of the sun.

It’s not the first time Parker has broken records. On September 21, 2023, the probe reached a speed of 635,266 km/h, once again breaking its record as the fastest object ever built by humanity.

During its Christmas Eve pass, the spacecraft that has become an expert at “touching the Sun” would have traveled at 692,000km/h — about 300 times faster than the top speed of a Lockheed Martin fighter jet here on Earth.

This incredible feat of speed was achieved thanks to the help of seven gravitational “boosts” from passes by Venus, the last of which occurred in November 2024.

But breaking records is just a byproduct of Parker’s core mission: learn more about the Sun. In particular, the probe needed to face the 980 degrees Celsius temperatures it will experience to collect data about the solar corona.

Scientists hope this data can help solve a mystery long-standing influence on the Sun’s outer atmosphere, which has been troubling them for decades: the so-called “coronal heating problem“: despite being further away from the Sun’s main source of energy (its core), the solar corona is much hotter than the Sun’s surface, the photosphere.

Our standard model of stars suggests that the closer we get to the stellar core, where main sequence stars like the Sun carry out nuclear fusion to transform hydrogen into helium and release energy, the hotter it gets.

All layers of the Sun appear to strictly obey this rule — with the exception of the corona, which can reach temperatures exceeding 1.1 million degrees Celsius; about 1,600 km closer to the Sun’s heat source, the photosphere reaches a relatively pleasant 4,100°C.

That’s like discovering this Christmas that chestnuts only roast when you drive them a couple of miles away from a fire! Thus, there must be an extra mechanism heating the solar corona — which scientists are naturally eager to find out what it is.

If you survived this Christmas adventure, Parker will continue his mission, making flybys of the Sun on March 22, 2025. Then, his final flyby will take place on June 19, 2025.