NASA's Parker Solar Probe Touches The Sun For The First Time

For the first time in history, a spacecraft has touched the Sun. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has now flown through the Sun’s upper atmosphere – the corona – and sampled particles and magnetic fields there. The new milestone marks one major step for Parker Solar Probe and one giant leap for solar science. Just as landing on the Moon allowed scientists to understand how it was formed, touching the very stuff the Sun is made of will help scientists uncover critical information about our closest star and its influence on the solar system. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Scientists: Nour Raouafi (Johns Hopkins University/APL) Justin Kasper (University of Michigan) Stuart Bale (University of California, Berkeley) Kelly Korreck (Johns Hopkins University/APL) Adam Szabo (NASA/GSFC) Producer: Joy Ng (KBRwyle) Writer: Mara Johnson-Groh (Wyle Information Systems) Data Visualizer: Tom Bridgman (GST) Animator: Jonathan North (KBRwyle) Animator: Ben Smith (Johns Hopkins APL) Music credits: “The Hague Parliament” by Laurent Dury [SACEM]”; “Flicker”, “Time Shift Equilibrium”, and “Flowing Cityscape” by Ben Biblett [PRS] and Jon Cotton [PRS]; “Games Show Sphere 07" by Anselm Kreuzer [GEMA] from Universal Production Music