The Parker Solar Probe, launched by NASA in 2018, embarks on a mission to study the Sun's outer corona. This daring probe ventures closer to our star than any other human-made object, coming within 9.86 solar radii from the Sun's centre. By 2025, it will reach speeds of up to 690,000 km/h, approximately 0.064% the speed of light.
In a symbolic gesture, a memory card containing the names of more than 1.1 million people, along with photos of physicist Eugene Newman Parker, the probe's namesake, and a copy of his groundbreaking 1958 scientific paper predicting aspects of solar physics, was installed on the spacecraft.
On October 29, 2018, at approximately 18:04 UTC, the Parker Solar Probe achieved the closest proximity to the Sun ever recorded for a human-made object. As of its perihelion on April 29, 2021, it came within 10.5 million kilometres of the Sun, with even closer approaches planned in its subsequent flybys of Venus.
