First close-up look at the sun by The Parker Solar Probe

This image from Parker Solar Probe's WISPR (Wide-field Imager for Solar Probe) instrument shows a coronal streamer, seen over the east limb of the Sun on Nov. 8, 2018, at 1:12 a.m. EST. Coronal streamers are structures of solar material within the Sun's atmosphere, the corona, that usually overlie regions of increased solar activity. The fine structure of the streamer is very clear, with at least two rays visible. Parker Solar Probe was about 16.9 million miles from the Sun's surface when this image was taken. The bright object near the center of the image is Jupiter, and the dark spots are a result of background correction. Credit: NASA/Naval Research Laboratory/Parker Solar Probe

The Parker Solar Probe of NASA has encountered up-close with the sun and has lived to tell the story, and also in the process breaking speed and distance records on its initial solar flyby.

The probe has now broken the records for the fastest space probe and the nearest approached by any spacecraft has made with the sun. Scientists reported on December 12 at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Washington, D.C. that the probe is sending data back from its close solar encounter at this moment.

"Heliophysicists have been waiting more than 60 years for a mission like this to be possible," said Nicola Fox, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Heliophysics is the study of the Sun and how it affects space near Earth, around other worlds and throughout the solar system. "The solar mysteries we want to solve are waiting in the corona."

First light data from Parker Solar Probe's WISPR (Wide-field Imager for Solar Probe) instrument suite. The right side of this image — from WISPR's inner telescope — has a 40-degree field of view, with its right edge 58.5 degrees from the Sun's center. The bright object slightly to the right of the image's center is Jupiter. The left side of the image is from WISPR's outer telescope, which has a 58-degree field of view and extends to about 160 degrees from the Sun. There is a parallax of about 13 degrees in the apparent position of the Sun as viewed from Earth and from Parker Solar Probe. Credit: NASA/Naval Research Laboratory/Parker Solar Probe

From Oct. 31 to Nov. 11, 2018, Parker Solar Probe completed its first solar encounter phase, speeding through the Sun's outer atmosphere — the corona — and collecting unprecedented data with four suites of cutting-edge instruments. But because the probe was on the opposite side of the sun from Earth during the flyby, Parker didn’t start relaying its observations until December 7. However only about one-fifth of the data recorded during Parker’s initial flyby will reach scientists before the sun gets between Earth and the spacecraft again. The rest will have to wait until next year, between March and May.

But there is excitement about it already, “What we are looking at now is completely brand new,” solar physicist Nour Raouafi of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Md., said at a news conference. “Nobody looked at this before.”

Source: NASA,