Parker Solar Probe Makes Ninth Solar Flyby Written 10 August 2021
Artist's rendition of NASA's Parker Solar Probe. | NASA
SPACE reports that the Parker Solar Probe made its ninth pass by the sun Monday at 3:10 p.m. EDT. The Parker Solar Probe is “focusing on understanding the mechanism by which the sun’s atmosphere gets so hot – thousands of degrees hotter than the sun’s surface – and the origins of the solar wind, a constant flood of charged particles streaming across the solar system.” The spacecraft matched a record for “the closest approach to the sun and fastest-moving object of a spacecraft,” a record which it will break when it returns to the sun in October.
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