History-making probe achieves closest-ever approach to the sun
The Parker Solar Probe zoomed by the sun on Tuesday during a record-breaking flyby, coming within 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) of the solar surface during humanity’s closest approach to a star.
The mission operations team, located at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, was able to confirm the success of the flyby Friday morning after receiving a signal from the spacecraft just before midnight on Thursday.
The mission team knew it wouldn’t receive any communications from the spacecraft during its closest pass of the sun. Now, the team members will await more detailed data from Parker about the spacecraft’s status that’s expected to return to Earth on January 1.
The uncrewed spacecraft flew at 430,000 miles per hour (692,000 kilometers...
