An incredible and historic performance.
NASA announced on Tuesday that the Parker probe had "touched" the Sun for the first time.
According to a press release from the American space agency, relayed by the
Huffington Post
, the spacecraft flew over the crown of the Sun, or the upper atmosphere of this star.
This feat was achieved on April 28th.
☀️ Our #ParkerSolarProbe has touched the Sun!
For the first time in history, a spacecraft has flown through the Sun's atmosphere, the corona.
Here's what it means: https://t.co/JOPdn7GTcv
# AGU21 pic.twitter.com/qOdEdIRyaS
- NASA (@NASA) December 14, 2021
"Touching the Sun is a giant leap for humanity"
“Just as landing on the Moon allowed scientists to understand how it formed, touching the Sun is a giant leap for humanity in helping us uncover critical information about our nearest star and its influence on the solar system, ”says Nicola Fox, director of NASA's heliophysical sciences division.
The purpose of this trip through the solar corona was to measure fluctuations in the magnetic field and sample particles.
"By flying so close to the Sun, Parker Solar Probe now detects conditions in the magnetically dominated layer of the solar atmosphere - the corona - that we have never been able to before", explains astrophysicist Nour Raouafi, scientist of the Parker project. at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
This scientific advance will allow specialists to try to unravel certain mysteries of the Sun, like the temperature difference between the corona and the photosphere.
It is already planned that the Parker probe will return from January 2022 to the closest to our star.
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