(Photo by NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben)
NASA announced that it has successfully sent a spacecraft into the Sun’s atmosphere.
NASA launched the Parker Solar Probe in 2018, which has now entered the Sun’s outermost atmosphere, called corona, that can reach three million degrees Fahrenheit. NASA estimates that the probe is 4.89 million miles away from the sun’s surface according to this illustration. The probe’s journey to the sun has allowed NASA to conduct studies, such as how structures in the solar wind, also known as “switchbacks,” affect the Earth’s atmosphere, satellites and telecommunications.
Parker Solar Probe can travel approximately 320,000 miles per hour, and NASA estimates that the probe will be within 3.83 million miles of the Sun by 2025.