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NASA\u2019s Parker Solar Probe has made history after becoming the first spacecraft to plunge into the Sun\u2019s atmosphere.<\/p>\n
The milestone journey was made on 28 April 2021, nearly three years after the probe\u2019s launch in August 2018, during its eighth flyby. It spent a total of five hours travelling amidst the plasma and solar winds in the Sun\u2019s upper atmosphere, or corona.<\/p>\n
The landmark event was not announced until 14 December as the data recorded by the probe took several months to reach the Earth and then several more to be processed and analysed by scientists.<\/p>\n
Read more about the Parker Solar Probe:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWe were fully expecting that, sooner or later, we would encounter the corona for at least a short duration of time,\u201d said Justin Kasper\u00a0deputy chief technology officer at BWX Technologies, Inc. and University of Michigan professor. \u201cBut it is very exciting that we\u2019ve already reached it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis marks the achievement of the primary objective of the Parker mission and a new era for understanding the physics of the corona.\u201d<\/p>\n Parker spent five hours exploring the Sun\u2019s atmosphere beneath a boundary known as the Alfv\u00e9n critical surface \u2013 the point at which the star\u2019s powerful gravitational and magnetic fields are no longer strong enough to prevent solar winds from escaping out into the Solar System, to Earth and beyond. During this time, it passed above and below the boundary a total of three times.<\/p>\n