The NASA spacecraft will fly closest to the Sun on Christmas Day

On Christmas Day, the Parker probe will fly closer than ever before to “touch the Sun”, eight times closer than the distance between Venus and the star. The ship will beat its own speed record, becoming the fastest man-made object to fly close to the Sun. While the probe will conduct several more close flybys over the next 12 months, it is unlikely to fly much closer than this time, according to Live Science.

Parker launched in 2018 with the goal of learning more about the Sun’s atmosphere (corona) by flying through it. The probe did it for the first time in 2021. The probe circled the star and sometimes around Venus multiple times to accumulate enough speed and momentum to get closer with each approach. To date, the spacecraft has completed 21 close flights to the Sun.

Parker came closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft in history, reaching a minimum distance of 7.2 million km from the star during close flybys in October 2023 and March this year. Previously, the ship also broke the record for the fastest man-made object, with a speed of 635,000 km/h, about 150 times faster than a rifle bullet.

At 6:53 a.m. on December 24, US time (5:53 p.m., December 24, Hanoi time), the Parker spacecraft will fly 6.1 million km from the Sun and reach a maximum speed of about 700,000 km/h, according to NASA. The craft will experience temperatures of over 1,400 degrees Celsius with the help of a heat shield that protects the sun-facing side of the vehicle.

The Parker spacecraft began this operation in early November when it successfully completed its seventh and final scheduled flyby around Venus. Borrowing assistance from gravity helps the ship gather the necessary thrust to break its own speed record. The spacecraft will also fly through a coronal mass ejection (CME) for the first time, helping to reveal a decades-old mystery surrounding how the corona heats itself.

This close flyby also coincides with the peak of the eruption in the 11-year cycle of solar activity, called solar maximum, which takes place for most of this year and continues into next year. Results from the flight could help learn about what happens to the Sun’s magnetic field when it inverts and predict how space weather can affect Earth.

It is expected that the Parker spacecraft will complete four more close flights to the Sun in 2025 and can fly a little closer to the star than on December 24. After that, the spacecraft’s thrusters will run out of fuel, and most of the spacecraft will be destroyed by the Sun. However, the heat shield could remain in orbit around the Sun for thousands of years.