A NASA spacecraft is piercing the sun's scorching atmosphere right now

A NASA spacecraft is making a close approach to the sun, repeating its record-breaking distance of 3.8 million miles from the solar surface. 

Parker Solar Probe reached "perihelion," the nearest point to the sun in its orbit, on Saturday, Dec. 13. This event is the spacecraft's latest flyby to study the corona, the outermost atmosphere of the sun. 

Parker also matched its record speed of 430,000 mph — fast enough to get from New York to Tokyo in less than a minute, according to the space agency. During this flyby, the probe will collect data on solar wind, flares, and coronal mass ejections — the mysterious solar activity that causes space weather. The spacecraft's four science instruments will measure solar particles and magnetic fields. 

The encounter comes one year after the historic flyby last December that saw Parker become the closest human-made object to the star. The findings and images from that event were published in two Astrophysical Journal Letters papers this week. 

"Eventually, with more and more passes by the sun, Parker Solar Probe will help us be able to continue building the big picture of the sun's magnetic fields and how they can affect us," said Nour Rawafi, Parker's project scientist, in a statement. "And as the sun transitions from solar maximum toward minimum, the scenes we'll witness may be even more dramatic."

Parker’s mission, which launched in 2018, was to gain insight on how the sun and corona work. It "touched" the sun for the first time in 2021, traveling into a region where the temperature is 2 million degrees Fahrenheit. 

Right now, space weather isn't well understood, and forecasting blasts of solar material that could disrupt power grids, telecommunications, and GPS systems remains challenging. Fortunately, the atmosphere and magnetic field shield earthlings against the most harmful health impacts of radiation during solar storms. 

But these events can have repercussions for technology on which people have come to depend. A solar flare in March 1989, for example, caused all of Quebec, Canada, to experience a 12-hour power outage. It also jammed radio signals for Radio Free Europe.

Coronal mass ejections and flares both involve enormous solar explosions and sometimes happen together. Through telescopes, the flares appear as bright light and the ejections look like fans of gas flying into space. The difference between the two phenomenons can be compared to Civil War-era artillery, NASA explains: 

"The flare is like the muzzle flash, which can be seen anywhere in the vicinity. The (coronal mass ejection) is like the cannonball, propelled forward in a single, preferential direction … only affecting a targeted area." 

The hot plasma from the ejection usually takes up to three days to reach the planet, traveling over 1 million mph. A geomagnetic storm can happen when charged particles from that plasma interact with Earth's magnetic field. 

The data also helped scientists create the first detailed maps of the corona's boundary, the Alfvén surface, where solar material breaks free and becomes solar wind. Credit: CfA / Melissa Weiss illustration

Parker's observations revealed that some magnetic material launched during a coronal mass ejection last December actually fell back to the sun instead of escaping. This recycling seems to reshape the magnetic environment and even influence the direction of later solar eruptions. 

The data also helped scientists create the first detailed maps of the corona's boundary, known as the Alfvén surface, where solar material breaks free and becomes solar wind. The spacecraft's measurements show that this zone grows larger and more jagged as the sun's activity ramps up. 

"The insights we gain from these images are an important part of understanding and predicting how space weather moves through the solar system, especially for mission planning that ensures the safety of our Artemis astronauts traveling beyond the protective shield of our atmosphere," said Joe Westlake, NASA's heliophysics division director, in a statement.

NASA is reviewing next steps for the spacecraft in 2026 and beyond.