Earlier this year, NASA's Parker Solar Probe flew extremely close to the Sun.
Its approach brought it within 15 million miles — far closer than the planetMercury— from the Sun's surface, traveling at 213,200 miles per hour,which isthe fastest any man-made spacecraft has ever traveled.
And today, we get to see a glimpse of what the Sun's surface and outer atmosphere looks like at that distance.jup
"Parker is an exploration mission — the potential for new discoveries is huge," saysNour Raouafi, Parker Solar Probe project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University.
Luckily, NASA has some clarifying words about what we're looking at. The image shows a so-called coronal streamer crossing the "east limb of the Sun." Oh, and that big white spot in the middle? That's Mercury, in the background.
The corona is the Sun's outer atmosphere, which is visible to the untrained eye during a total solar eclipse. Coronal streamers occur when more than the usual quantity ofsolar particles are released from the Sun's solar winds.
The Parker Solar Probe had to travel very quickly to get such a clear view. The Sun rotates once every 27 days, meaning thatany spacecraft near it has to keep up, especially given the Sun's massive size.
Some Big Questions
NASA's Parker Solar Probe is trying to answer some pretty big questions about our star: why is the corona so hot compared to the surface below it? How does solar wind accelerate so quickly? How do the Sun's most energetic particles shoot away from the Sun at more than half the speed of light?
Thanks to the Parker Solar Probe, we will soon know a lot more about the underlying physics of that big blob of hot plasma at the center of our solar system.
Editor's note:an earlier version of this article misstated which planet was brightly visible in the image. It has been updated.
Parker Solar Probe now holds the record for closest approach to the Sun by a human-made object. The spacecraft passed the current record of 26.55 million miles from the Sun's surface on Oct.
Nasa's Parker Solar Probe has once again broken its own record for being the fastest man-made object ever. The history-making craft reached a ferocious 394,736 miles per hour (635,266 km per hour) as it continues its mission hurtling around the Sun.
As of March 2024, humans have not traveled beyond low Earth orbit since the Apollo 17 lunar mission in December 1972. Currently, the United States, Russia, and China are the only countries with public or commercial human spaceflight-capable programs.
Sun is a massive celestial body with a tremendous gravitational pull. It holds our entire solar system together and keeps the planets in their orbits. However, despite its immense gravitational force, we do not get pulled into the Sun.
It has a strong greenhouse effect, similar to the one we experience on Earth. Because of this, Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system. The surface of Venus is approximately 465°C!
Uranus holds the record for the coldest temperature ever measured in the Solar System: a very chilly -224℃. The temperature on Neptune is still very cold, of course – usually around -214℃ – but Uranus beats that.
The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter took a Sun photo on March 26, 2022, which is the closest so far. The process was not easy! The Solar Orbiter was inside the orbit of Mercury, at about one-third the distance from the Sun to the Earth.
Of the three stars in the system, the dimmest - called Proxima Centauri - is actually the nearest star to the Sun. The two bright stars, called Alpha Centauri A and B form a close binary system; they are separated by only 23 times the Earth - Sun distance.
Today, January 3rd, is Perihelion Day, a special day for everyone on Earth. It's when our planet is closest to the sun in 2024. On this day, Earth is about 3 million miles nearer to the sun compared to when it's farthest away, called the aphelion.
That means the Earth would become uninhabitable if its average distance from the Sun was reduced by as little as 1.5 million km – which is only about four times the Moon's distance from Earth! Read more: What would happen to Earth's orbit if the Sun vanished? Who first claimed planets go round the Sun?
So there is no specific distance from the Sun that is considered safe for humans to travel, as even in Earth orbit spacecraft and astronauts can suffer severe damage from our star. Crewed missions to the innermost planet, Mercury, are therefore highly unlikely.
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