Sun probe goes where none has gone before
NASA’S Parker Solar Probe has gone closer to the Sun than any other, beating the record of 26.6 million miles set by Helios-2 in 1976.
The probe will keep getting closer to the Sun until it flies through the corona, or outer atmosphere, next week, passing within 15 million miles of the solar surface. In the next seven years it will come within 3.8 million miles of the surface.
The Parker probe is the first NASA craft named after a living person, and astrophysicist Eugene Parker, 91, was at August’s launch.
The unmanned probe is protected from the sun’s heat and radiation by a carbon shield. The £1.17billion project is designed to give scientists a better understanding of solar wind and geomagnetic storms.
They risk wreaking chaos by knocking out Earth’s power grids.