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News > Science and Tech

NASA's Probe Breaks Records Kilometers from the Sun's Surface

  • The historical probe was launched in August with promises to

    The historical probe was launched in August with promises to "revolutionize" the world’s understanding of the Sun. | Photo: NASA

Published 30 October 2018
Opinion

Scientists wait to see if the solar probe will break the speed record set by it’s 1976 rival, the Helios 2, at nearly 70 km/s.

The NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is breaking past records on its galactic journey to ”touch the sun,” the U.S. aeronautics and space administration said Tuesday.

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Blasting past its predecessor’s best of 43 million km on Monday at 1:04 pm, Nasa said the Parker Probe is likely to continue breaking records in its attempt to come within 6 million km from the star’s surface.

Scientists are waiting to see if the solar probe will break the speed record set by its 1976 rival, the Helios 2, at nearly 70 km/s.

“It’s a proud moment for the team, though we remain focused on our first solar encounter, which begins on October 31,” said Andy Driesman, Parker project manage.

“It’s been just 78 days since Parker Solar Probe launched, and we’ve now come closer to our star than any other spacecraft in history,”  Driesman said.

The historical probe was launched in August with promises to "revolutionize" the world’s understanding of the Sun and to hurtle past "brutal heat" and radiation to study energetic particles, magnetic fields, and plasma while recording solar wind.

The U.S. space agency said, "Space weather can change the orbits of satellites, shorten their lifetimes, or interfere with onboard electronics. The more we learn about what causes space weather – and how to predict it – the more we can protect the satellites we depend on," the agency said.

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