A visualization of the Parker Solar Probe in front of the sun. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben)
On New Year's Day, NASA's Parker Solar Probe contributed to the joyful cheer by sending out home more excellent news about its record-breaking closest-ever method to the sun.
On Wednesday (Jan. 1), objective control at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland started getting the Parker Solar Probe's very first telemetry– or housekeeping information– that verifies Parker's systems and science instruments are “healthy and running usually” after its historical rendezvous with the sun, NASA shared in an upgrade on Thursday (Jan. 2).
“All is looking great with the spacecraft systems and instrument operations,” Michael Buckley, a representative at JHUAPL, which supervises the Parker Solar Probe objective, informed Space.com in an e-mail. “It truly is an impressive spacecraft!”
The current telemetry transmission likewise verifies the Parker Solar Probe effectively performed the commands configured into its flight computer systems which its science instruments were working throughout the flyby, according to the declaration. That suggests the spacecraft gathered important information about our star as it stroked to within 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) of the sun's surface area– the closest yet a spacecraft has actually ever gotten to our star.
“While Parker Solar Probe was closer to the sun than any other human-made things in history, it ran simply as it was created to do, and made observations that nobody has actually had the ability to make previously,” Helene Winters, the program supervisor for the Parker Solar Probe objective at JHUAPL, stated in the declaration.
On Dec. 26, Parker Solar Probe indicated Earth to report it endured its record-breaking flyby of the Sun on Dec. 24. New transmissions got on Jan. 1 offer more information, verifying the spacecraft gathered information throughout the flyby, and more: https://t.co/FzGCGTXjhoJanuary 2, 2025
The telemetry transmission, which objective control is getting through NASA's Deep Space Network, continues through Thursday, Buckley stated. The probe needs to beam home its gathered science information later on this month, when its most effective onboard antenna will remain in much better positioning with Earth to send at greater rates.
“The information that will boil down from the spacecraft will be fresh info about a location that we, as humankind, have actually never ever been,” Joe Westlake, the director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, stated in a Dec. 27 upgrade. “It's a remarkable achievement.”
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On Christmas Eve, the Parker Solar Probe sped through the scorching solar environment while taking a trip at an optimal speed of 430,000 miles per hour (690,000 kilometers per hour)– quickly enough to take a trip from Tokyo to Washington, D.C. within a minute– breaking its own record as the fastest item ever developed.
Researchers ran out contact with the probe throughout the rendezvous, and right before midnight on Dec.[ยป19659011]…
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