NASA’s Solar Probe Will Make History On Christmas Eve By Coming Closer To The Sun Than Ever Before

The Sun is getting an unexpected visitor for Christmas: NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which is about to get uncomfortably close to the star. The tiny probe is preparing to approach the Sun this week, where it will endure temperatures of up to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (982.2 degrees Celsius).

The Parker Solar Probe launched in August 2018 on a mission to touch the Sun, getting closer to the star with each orbit. On December 24, the spacecraft will come within 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) of the Sun’s surface, making it the closest approach to the sun in history. At that distance, the mission has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the Sun, resisting harsh radiation from the star to collect data on the origin and evolution of the solar wind.

This close encounter has been a long time in the making. In 2021, the probe became the first mission to fly through the Sun’s corona, or the upper atmosphere of a star. The Parker Solar Probe made a remarkable journey through a coronal mass ejection (CME), an explosive burst of high-energy radiation from the Sun, on a historic flight. In September 2022, the mission repeated the mission and captured data to help scientists understand how the Sun’s plasma interacts with the surrounding planetary dust.

As of this September, the Parker probe has made 21 close approaches to the Sun, coming within 4.51 million miles (7.26 million km) of the sun’s surface. In November, the Parker Solar Probe made its seventh and final flyby of Venus, using gravity to launch itself into a close orbit around the Sun. The flyby was the final step in a mission designed to swing the probe closer to our host star.

The Parker Solar Probe is already the fastest man-made object in history, but during its approach, the spacecraft will fly past the Sun at a speed of 430,000 miles per hour, according to NASA. The Parker Solar Probe needs that speed to overcome the Sun’s gravity. At that speed, a spaceship can go from Washington, DC, to Philadelphia in one second.

The spacecraft also needs to survive the intense heat from the Sun. Its heat shield will reach temperatures of up to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (982.2 degrees Celsius), while keeping the spacecraft’s body at a cool 85 degrees Fahrenheit (29.4 degrees Celsius). The Parker Solar Probe’s heat shield is 8 feet (2.4 meters) wide and 4.5 inches (about 115 mm) thick. The shield is made of carbon composite foam sandwiched between two carbon plates, with a coat of white ceramic paint on the plate facing the Sun to reflect more heat from the star.

As we make its closest recorded approach to the Sun, the spacecraft will track the energy flow on the star’s surface, examine the heating of the solar corona, and investigate what accelerates the solar wind, according to NASA.

With this data, scientists hope to find answers about the most persistent mysteries of the Sun. One of the Sun’s most puzzling features is that its corona, or upper atmosphere, is 200 times hotter than its surface. Some of the heliophysical quandaries Parker might mention are the main driver of the solar wind and the source of high-energy solar particles. The data from the research can also help scientists to better predict space weather, which can affect the Earth with a beautiful aurora and a destructive increase in the global electrical infrastructure.

The Christmas flyby is the first of three at the same distance from the Sun, making full use of the power of the daredevil spacecraft.