NASA officials have received healthy signals from the Parker Space Probe, following the craft’s record breaking approach to the Sun.
The marking signal was received by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, shortly before midnight on December 26.
NASA lost contact during the probe’s closest approach to the Sun, which occurred on December 24.
Parker Space Probe Approaches
During its solar fly-by, Parker came more than seven times closer to the sun than any past spacecraft, moving at an astounding 430,000 miles per hour, placing it within just 3.8 million miles of the solar surface.
Along with its close approach bringing Parker nearer to the Sun than any spacecraft, it is also officialy the fastest spacecraft ever built, equipped with a heat shield that makes it capable of taking on temperatures of close to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,371 degrees Celsius).
Coming this close to the Sun, the probe can take measurements, answering various questions about our home star. These include how the region’s material heats to millions of degrees, where the solar wind originates, and how energetic particles accelerate to near-light speed. Earlier close passes solved mysteries such as discerning the origins of structures in the solar wind and mapping the outer boundary of the Sun’s atmosphere.
NASA officials say that additional, more detailed telemetry data is scheduled to be transmitted back to Earth by Parker on January 1.
Living With A Star
The Parker Space Probe is one of several projects under NASA’s Living With A Star Program. While the agency may be sending the James Webb Space Telescope to investigate the furthest regions of space, there is still much left to explore in Earth’s relationship to its Sun.
The program mainly focuses on how Earth-Sun interaction affects life and society on our planet. Goddard Space Flight Center manages the Living With A Star Program from Greenbelt, Maryland.
“This is one example of NASA’s bold missions, doing something that no one else has ever done before to answer longstanding questions about our universe,” said Arik Posner, Parker Solar Probe program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington prior to receiving the latest update.
“We can’t wait to receive that first status update from the spacecraft and start receiving the science data in the coming weeks.”
Ryan Whalen is a writer based in New York. He has served in the Army National Guard and holds a BA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He is currently finishing an MA in Public History and working with the Harbor Defense Museum at Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn.