The Parker Solar Probe, launched by NASA in 2018, has flown closer to the Sun than any human-made object in history — traveling at more than 430,000 miles per hour with a heat shield that reaches 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit, while the instruments behind it stay at room temperature, protected by four and a half inches of carbon foam

At approximately 6:53 in the morning Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday, 24 December 2024 — while the substantial majority of the American public was engaged in various Christmas Eve preparations, and while the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory mission operations team in Laurel, Maryland was out of radio contact with the specific spacecraft it had [...] The post The Parker Solar Probe, launched by NASA in 2018, has flown closer to the Sun than any human-made object in history — traveling at