The Parker Solar Probe was scheduled to make its closest approach ever to the sun on Tuesday. It will be revealed on Friday whether the mission was successful. The ship began its journey in 2018.
NASA's Parker Solar Probe was scheduled to enter the sun's exosphere, known as the corona, on Tuesday to help scientists learn more about Earth's closest star, Reuters reported.
“No man-made object has ever flown this close to a star, so Parker brings data from truly uncharted territory,” said Nick Pinkin, mission operations manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. It will happen,” he said.
At approximately 6:53 a.m. ET (12:53 p.m. in Poland), the spacecraft was scheduled to pass 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) from the surface of the sun. Temperatures there are 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit (over 926 degrees Celsius).
NASA. the closest spacecraft to the sun
The Parker Solar Probe is designed to withstand temperatures up to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (982 degrees Celsius). It will travel at speeds of up to 430,000 miles per hour (692,000 kilometers per hour), NASA said on its website.
Look: they can't come back from space. they were to spend a few days there
On Friday, mission operators plan to re-establish contact with the spacecraft and confirm its post-flight status.
The spacecraft will enter the solar atmosphere for the first time in 2021. The spacecraft discovered new details about the boundaries of the sun's atmosphere and collected close-up images of coronal jets, the hump-like structures visible during solar eclipses, Reuters writes.
Since its launch in 2018, the spacecraft has gradually moved closer to the sun. NASA said one of the probe's instruments captured visible light from Venus, giving scientists a new way to see through the dense clouds on the planet's surface.
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