A NASA mission is positioned to “touch the Sun.”

It looks to be a pivotal point in space exploration history. On December 24, 2022, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will blast by the Sun at an incredible 435,000 mph (195 km/s). Relative to our star, it is only 6.1 million kilometers, or 3.8 million miles, from its “surface”; no other object created by humans could have traveled so quickly or come this close. Dr. Nour Raouafi, a project scientist for Parker, remarked, “We are basically almost landing on a star.” “This will be a huge victory for all of humanity. The expert from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory told BBC News that this was comparable to the 1969 Moon landing.

Parker will travel at a high pace because of the strong gravitational attraction it experiences as it approaches the Sun. It will be similar to taking a quick 30-second flight from New York to London. One of the most daring missions ever imagined is the US space agency’s Parker Solar Probe. Its 2018 launch was intended to make many, ever-closer approaches of the Sun. Parker will travel just 4% of the Sun-Earth distance (149 million km/93 million miles) during the maneuver in late 2024.

Parker is going to have a very difficult task ahead of him. The temperature on the front of the spacecraft will most likely hit 1,400C at perihelion, the point in the probe’s orbit closest to the star. Parker plans to enter and exit quickly while using a suite of instruments to measure the solar environment while concealed behind a substantial heat shield. Researchers anticipate that their efforts will pay off with new insights into a few important solar processes. The most important of these is an improved understanding of how the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, functions.