Nasa spacecraft makes history by surviving closest-ever approach to Sun

A Nasa spacecraft has made history by surviving the closest-ever approach to the sun by any human-made object.

The space agency said the Parker Solar Probe was safe and “operating normally” after travelling within 3.8 million miles (6.1 million km) of the sun’s surface on Christmas Eve.

The probe was travelling at 430,000 miles per hour where it potentially endured temperatures of up to 982°C in the sun’s outer atmosphere – the corona – Nasa said.

Nasa said the mission operations team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, received the signal on Boxing Day evening .

The spacecraft is expected to send back detailed data about its condition and experiences on New Year’s Day.

“Following its record-breaking closest approach to the sun, Nasa’s Parker Solar Probe has transmitted a beacon tone back to Earth indicating it’s in good health and operating normally,” Nasa said in a statement.

Scientists hope the mission will help them learn more about Earth’s closest star.

The data could help them measure how material is heated to millions of degrees, find where solar wind comes from and learn how energetic particles reach near light speeds.

Since the spacecraft launched in 2018, it has circled gradually closer to the sun – flying past Venus in order to use the planet’s gravity to move it into a tighter orbit.

When it first passed into the sun’s atmosphere in 2021, the probe made unexpected discoveries about the boundary of the corona.