Parker Solar Probe checked in with mission operators at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Maryland — where it was also designed and built — on Sunday, June 22, reporting that all systems are healthy and operating normally. The spacecraft was out of contact with Earth and operating autonomously during the close approach.

During this flyby, the spacecraft also equaled its record-setting speed of 430,000 miles per hour (687,000 km per hour) — a mark that, like the distance, was set and subsequently matched during close approaches on Dec. 24, 2024, and March 22, 2025.

The data obtained during this fly-by will be beamed back to Earth in the coming months, as Parker moves to the outer part of its orbit, farther from the Sun.

Though this completes the planned orbits of the mission’s primary mission, the proposed Trump budget continues to fund the spacecraft’s operation for the next five years, allowing it to monitor changes in the Sun as it ramps down from solar maximum to solar minimum.

Engineers have now confirmed that during its record-breaking close fly-by of the Sun on December 24, 2024 all of its science instruments functioned as planned and were able to collect data as to that previously unexplored near-solar environment.

Breaking its previous record by flying just 3.8 million miles above the surface of the Sun, Parker Solar Probe hurtled through the solar atmosphere at 430,000 miles per hour — faster than any human-made object has ever moved. A beacon tone, received in the mission operations center at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, late in the evening of Thursday, Dec. 26, confirmed the spacecraft had made it through the encounter safely.

The telemetry (or housekeeping data) that APL began receiving on Jan. 1 provided more detail on the spacecraft’s operating status and condition. It showed, for example, that Parker had executed the commands that had been programmed into its flight computers before the flyby, and that its science instruments were operational during the flyby itself.

A full download of this data will occur later this month, after the spacecraft further retreats from the Sun and gets in a better position to transmit it.

This ain’t the end, however. Parker has two more similar close-up fly-ups coming in March and June. Neither will break December’s records, but both will be almost as close to the Sun. After this the probe’s primary mission will be complete. At the moment there is no word if it will get extended should the probe survive intact after those fly-bys.

The flyby will adjust Parker’s trajectory into its final orbital configuration, bringing the spacecraft to within an unprecedented 3.86 million miles of the solar surface on Dec. 24, 2024. It will be the closest any human made object has been to the Sun.

That close solar approach will occur on December 24, 2024. Whether the spacecraft can survive is the main question, and we won’t find out until three days later, when it sends a signal to confirm its survival. If successful, it will then attempt to repeat that close fly-by at least two more times.

As for the Venus fly-by, the spacecraft will use one instrument to attempt to peer into Venus’s clouds.

Set up by a gravity-assist flyby of Venus on Aug. 21, the close approach (known as perihelion) occurred at 7:28 p.m. EDT, with Parker Solar Probe moving 394,736 miles per hour (635,266 kilometers per hour) around the Sun – another record. The milestone also marked the midway point in the mission’s 17th solar encounter, which began Sept. 22 and continues through Oct. 3.

It zipped past the Sun at a distance of only 4.51 million miles, also a record.

Whether it survived this fly-by will not be confirmed until October 1, when it is able to safely send its first data back after moving far enough away from the Sun to reopen communications.

During its flybys of Venus in July 2020 and February 2021 the Parker Solar Probe used its wide field camera to take images of the night side of Venus in red optical and near infrared wavelengths, essentially measuring the heat (in the range of 863 degrees Fahrenheit) being emitted by the planet’s surface.

The resulting images, the first orbital photos of Venus’ surface in the optical, showed continent-sized surface details that matched previously made radar maps, and confirmed as expected that the higher altitudes are cooler than the lower.

The paper outlining these results can be read here.

The two pictures to the right compare previous radar maps (on the right) with the new Parker image (on the left). The central dark and cooler area is a region called Aphrodite Terra, which like Earth’s continents sits higher than the surrounding terrain.

Note that though cooler, the surface at these dark areas is still hellishly hot, more than 800 degrees Fahrenheit. Exploring the surface of Venus is going to be a far far far more challenging task that going to Mars.

On May 9, 2020, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe began its longest observation campaign to date. The spacecraft, which has already completed four progressively closer orbits around the Sun, activated its instruments at a distance of 62.5 million miles from the Sun’s surface, some 39 million miles farther from the Sun than a typical solar encounter. The four instrument suites will continue to collect data through June 28, markedly longer than the mission’s standard 11-day encounters.

The nearly two-month campaign is spurred by Parker Solar Probe’s earlier observations, which revealed significant rotation of the solar wind and solar wind phenomena occurring much farther from the Sun than previously thought. The earlier activation of the science instruments allows the team to cover a larger range in order to trace the evolution of the solar wind as it moves away from the Sun.

Perihelion will occur on June 7 at a distance of 11.6 million miles from the Sun. That will match the previous record set during Parker’s previous orbit for the closest solar fly-by ever. They will then follow this with another fly-by of Venus, which will tighten the orbit even more.

Mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab received the status beacon from the spacecraft at 4:46 p.m. EST on Nov. 7, 2018. The beacon indicates status “A” — the best of all four possible status signals, meaning that Parker Solar Probe is operating well with all instruments running and collecting science data and, if there were any minor issues, they were resolved autonomously by the spacecraft.

At its closest approach on Nov. 5, called perihelion, Parker Solar Probe reached a top speed of 213,200 miles per hour, setting a new record for spacecraft speed. Along with new records for the closest approach to the Sun, Parker Solar Probe will repeatedly break its own speed record as its orbit draws closer to the star and the spacecraft travels faster and faster at perihelion.

It will be several weeks before they can download all the data gathered during this first fly-by.