NASA's Parker Space Probe becomes 1st spacecraft to 'touch' the sun

Three years after it was launched, NASA's Parker Solar Probe has become the first spacecraft in history to "touch" the sun, officials said.

NASA said the probe flew through the sun's upper atmosphere, the corona, and took some particle samples. The agency called it a "monumental" moment and a "giant leap for solar science."

Because it's closer to the sun than any man-made craft has gotten, the Parker Space Probe is able to see things on the sun that other spacecraft were too far away to pick up.

NASA believes getting so close to the sun will help scientists uncover new information about the Earth's closest star and its effects on the solar system.

"Not only does this milestone provide us with deeper insights into our sun's evolution and it's impacts on our solar system, but everything we learn about our own star also teaches us more about stars in the rest of the universe," NASA Associate Administrator for Science Mission Directorate Thomas Zurbuchen said in a statement.

In 2019, the probe discovered several magnetic zig-zag structures in the solar wind, called switchbacks. It's only now that, because it's much closer, scientists were able to determine that the solar surface is at least one place where switchbacks originate.

The Parker Space Probe will continue to pass by the sun and continually return data to Earth.

"The first passage through the corona - and the promise of more flybys to come - will continue to provide data on phenomena that are impossible to study from afar," NASA said in a statement.

The spacecraft launched in 2018, decades after it was first conceived. It took three years to arrive at the sun and has traveled closer to the G-type main-sequence star than any of its predecessors.

"We were fully expecting that, sooner or later, we would encounter the corona for at least a short duration of time," University of Michigan space sciences professor Justin Kasper said in a statement.

"But it is very exciting that we've already reached it."

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