Transmitted signal back

NASA probe survives record flyby of the sun

An artist's impression of the historic moment provided by NASA

(Bild: APA/AP)

The Parker space probe has survived its flyby of the sun. After the closest ever flyby of a man-made object by the sun at Christmas, the probe sent a signal back to Earth for the first time on Friday. 

"Parker has sent a signal back to Earth indicating that it is in good condition and functioning normally," wrote the US space agency NASA on the mission's blog.

Closer to the sun than any probe before
The signal was received by the mission coordinators at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland on the night of December 26-27 after a 48-hour wait. The probe had reached its closest point to the sun at 12:53 a.m. (CET) on December 24. At 6.1 million kilometers, it came closer to the surface of the sun than any probe before it.

Data still pending
Data will not be available until the end of January, when the probe's main antenna points towards Earth, said astrophysicist Volker Bothmer from the University of Göttingen a few days before the flyby. "But it will take several years until we have analyzed and understood all the data." According to NASA calculations, the probe, which was the size of a small car, had a speed of around 690,000 kilometers per hour at its closest point to the sun and was able to withstand temperatures of around 1000 degrees Celsius.

It therefore flew faster than any other man-made object to date. To protect the instruments, it has an 11.4 centimeter-thick heat shield, which consists mainly of carbon. According to NASA, it is even designed to withstand temperatures of around 1400 degrees.