A NASA spacecraft is piercing the sun’s scorching atmosphere right now

A NASA the spacecraft is approaching closely the sunrepeating its record distance of 3.8 million kilometers from the solar surface.

Parker solar probe reached “perihelion”, the closest point to the sun in its orbit, on Saturday, December 13. This event is the spacecraft’s final flyby to study the crownthe sun’s outermost atmosphere.

Parker also matched his record speed of 430,000 mph – fast enough to get from New York to Tokyo in less than a minute, according to the space agency. During this flyby, the probe will collect data on the solar wind, flaresAnd coronal mass ejections — the mysterious solar activity which causes space weather. The spacecraft’s four science instruments will measure solar particles and magnetic fields.

This meeting comes a year after the historic overview last December which saw Parker become the man-made object closest to the star. The results and images from this event were published in two Letters from astrophysical journals newspapers this week.

“Eventually, with more and more passes in front of the sun, Parker Solar Probe will help us continue to build a global picture of the sun’s magnetic fields and how they can affect us,” Parker project scientist Nour Rawafi said in a declaration. “And as the sun moves from solar maximum to solar minimum, the scenes we see could be even more dramatic.”

Parker’s mission, launched in 2018, was to better understand how the sun and corona work. He “touched” the sun for the first time in 2021, traveling to a region where the temperature reaches 2 million degrees Fahrenheit.

Currently, space weather is not well understood and it remains difficult to predict explosions of solar materials that could disrupt power grids, telecommunications and GPS systems. Fortunately, the atmosphere and magnetic field protect Earthlings from most attacks. adverse health effects radiation during solar storms.

But these events can impact the technology that people now depend on. A solar flare in March 1989for example, caused a 12-hour power outage throughout Quebec, Canada. He also jammed the radio signals of Radio Free Europe.

Coronal mass ejections and flares both involve huge solar explosions and sometimes occur together. Thanks to telescopes, flares appear as bright light and ejections look like fans of gas flying through space. The difference between the two phenomena can be compared to the artillery of the Civil War era, NASA explains:

“The flare is like the muzzle flash, which can be seen anywhere nearby. The coronal mass ejection is like a cannonball, propelled forward in a single preferential direction… affecting only one targeted area.”

Hot plasma from the ejection typically takes up to three days to reach the planet, traveling more than a million km/h. A geomagnetic storm can occur when charged particles of this plasma interact with the Earth’s magnetic field.

The data also helped scientists create the first detailed maps of the corona boundary, the Alfvén surface, where solar matter is released and becomes the solar wind.
Credit: CfA / Illustration Melissa Weiss

Parker’s observations revealed that some magnetic materials launched during a coronal mass ejection last December I fell back into the sun instead of running away. This recycling appears to reshape the magnetic environment and even influence the direction of subsequent solar flares.

The data also helped scientists create the first detailed maps from the corona boundary, known as the Alfvén surface, where solar matter is released and becomes solar wind. The spacecraft’s measurements show that this area is growing and becoming more irregular as the sun’s activity increases.

“The information we gain from these images plays an important role in understanding and predicting the evolution of space weather in the Solar System, particularly for planning missions that ensure the safety of our Artemis astronauts traveling beyond the protective shield of our atmosphere,” Joe Westlake, director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division, said in a statement.

NASA is looking at the spacecraft’s next steps in 2026 and beyond.