In December 2024 a NASA spacecraft flew straight into the Sun’s outer atmosphere at 430,000 miles per hour, the fastest any human-made object has ever moved, through a region millions of degrees hot —

Key Points:

• NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, launched in 2018, recently completed a record-breaking close flyby of the Sun at about 3.8 million miles, reaching speeds of 430,000 mph and becoming the fastest human-made object ever.
• The probe is designed to study the Sun’s corona and solar wind, providing unprecedented data that helps scientists understand solar atmospheric behavior and the acceleration of charged particles into space.
• The mission was made possible by advances in heat-resistant carbon-composite materials, enabling the spacecraft to survive extreme temperatures and radiation while keeping its instruments near room temperature.
• Parker Solar Probe has transformed solar science, notably by flying through the Sun’s corona in 2021, detecting magnetic “switchbacks,” and helping explain why the corona is significantly hotter than the Sun’s surface.
• The spacecraft remains fully operational in an elliptical orbit around the Sun, continuing to gather critical data to answer fundamental questions about the Sun and space weather.