NASA solar probe to make closest-ever pass of the Sun in historic mission

NASA's Parker Solar Probe is about to make its closest-ever approach to the Sun on Christmas Eve. The spacecraft will get as close as 6.2 million kilometres to the Sun’s surface, breaking its record for being the closest any human-made object has ever come to the Sun.

Launched in August 2018, the Parker Solar Probe is on a seven-year mission to help scientists understand the Sun better and predict space weather events that can impact life on Earth. The spacecraft will make this closest pass, called a perihelion, on Tuesday, December 24, at 6:53 am (11:53 GMT).

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To put the distance into perspective, if the distance between the Earth and the Sun were the length of a football field, the spacecraft would be just a few meters from the end zone at that moment.

Arik Posner, the program scientist for the Parker Solar Probe, shared, “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. We can’t wait to get the first status update from the spacecraft and start receiving the science data soon.”

During this close approach, the spacecraft will lose direct contact with mission control, but a “beacon tone” will be used to confirm the spacecraft's status. The probe's heat shield will endure extreme temperatures of around 870 to 930 degrees Celsius, but the internal instruments will stay cool at around 29°C, similar to room temperature.

While approaching the Sun, Parker Solar Probe will travel at an incredible speed of 690,000 kilometres per hour, fast enough to travel from Washington, D.C. to Tokyo in less than a minute.

“No human-made object has ever passed this close to a star, so Parker will truly be returning data from uncharted territory,” said Nick Pinkine, mission operations manager at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

The Parker Solar Probe is helping scientists unlock some of the Sun's greatest mysteries, such as how the solar wind is created, why the Sun’s outer atmosphere (called the corona) is hotter than its surface, and how coronal mass ejections, which are massive clouds of plasma, are formed.

This Christmas Eve flyby is just the first of three record-breaking close passes. The next two will happen in March and June of 2025, bringing the probe even closer to the Sun, and helping scientists continue their exploration of our star.