NASA: Parker Probe is OK After Record Close Approach to The Sun
NASA’s new year started with good news, as word came from the Parker Solar Probe. Mission control at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland received the first maintenance data confirming that the spacecraft’s systems and scientific instruments were “healthy and operating normally” after its historic close encounter with the Sun.
“Everything looks good with the spacecraft’s systems and instrument performance,” Michael Buckley, a JHUAPL spokesman, told Space.com in an email. “It’s a really great spacecraft!” he said.
The latest telemetry transmission also confirms that Parker Solar Probe successfully executed the commands programmed into its onboard computers and that its scientific instruments were functioning during its flyby of the Sun. This means that the spacecraft collected valuable data about our star as it approached the Sun at the closest approach ever made by a spacecraft.
Scientists hope Parker’s data will help them solve long-standing mysteries about our sun, such as why its tenuous outer atmosphere, the corona, gets hundreds of times hotter the farther it extends from the hot star.
