Parker probe phones home, signalling it has successfully survived its record-breaking closest approach to the Sun
The flight plan for Parker. Click for original.
NASA today reported that it has received a signal from the Parker Solar Probe, indicating all of its systems are in good health following its record-breaking closest approach to the Sun on December 24, 2024.
The mission operations team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland received the signal just before midnight EST, on the night of Dec. 26. The team was out of contact with the spacecraft during closest approach, which occurred on Dec. 24, with Parker Solar Probe zipping just 3.8 million miles from the solar surface while moving about 430,000 miles per hour.
Not only was this the closest any human-built object has gotten to the Sun, it was the fastest any human-built object has ever traveled.
This close fly-by was Parker’s 22nd of the Sun since launch. In its nominal mission it plans to do two more close approaches as shown in the graphic to the right, both of which will be comparable to the record just set.
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The flight plan for Parker. Click for original.
NASA today reported that it has received a signal from the Parker Solar Probe, indicating all of its systems are in good health following its record-breaking closest approach to the Sun on December 24, 2024.
The mission operations team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland received the signal just before midnight EST, on the night of Dec. 26. The team was out of contact with the spacecraft during closest approach, which occurred on Dec. 24, with Parker Solar Probe zipping just 3.8 million miles from the solar surface while moving about 430,000 miles per hour.
Not only was this the closest any human-built object has gotten to the Sun, it was the fastest any human-built object has ever traveled.
This close fly-by was Parker’s 22nd of the Sun since launch. In its nominal mission it plans to do two more close approaches as shown in the graphic to the right, both of which will be comparable to the record just set.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
So this means that NASA, and thus of course the United States, holds the records for vehicles which have come the closest to the Sun, and gone the farthest distance away from the Sun.
Is the sun giving up it’s secrets? Any jaw dropping data that we didn’t know before? There should be some new numbers concerning solar maximum? Has the magnetic field flipped yet?
All the hype of all the experiments to be performed before launching is now strangely quiet… I hope it’s not a repeat of all the discoveries made by the Soho satellite that were quickly censored and placed in a category of a “privileged information” accessible only by the licensed universities.
The sun not being a nuclear furnace can’t be kept secret for much longer, the excuse of unicorns eating the radiation byproduct of protons and neutrons and turning them into subatomic particles that we can’t detect, will not keep the thinking person at bay much longer.
The amount of Fusion that must take place to make the Sun’s solar output what it is, would make enough nuclear byproducts that would irradiate this world lifeless with every rotation.
You get more radiation from smoking cigarettes then you do from living in space!