Parker Solar Probe survived its closest approach to the Sun and will make two more probes in 2025

NASA said on Friday that it had received a signal from the Parker Solar Probe confirming that the spacecraft had survived its closest trip ever around the sun. This approach took just 3.8 million miles from the surface, passing inside the Sun’s corona and allowing unprecedented data collection so close to the star. A few million miles may seem like a very long distance, but to put things in perspective, “If the solar system were scaled down so that the distance between the Sun and Earth was the length of a football field, the Parker Solar Probe would be just four yards from the end zone,” he explains.

The probe’s current orbit takes it closest to the sun about every three months. It will swing back around for two more close rounds in 2025, on March 22 and June 19. The probe is expected to transmit data from its latest approach soon, once it is in a better position to do so. “The data that will come down from the spacecraft will be new information about a place that we as humans have never visited before,” said Joe Westlake, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters. “It’s an amazing achievement.”