NASA spacecraft flies closest ever to the Sun
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Things are heating up for the USA's NASA space agency. In 2018, NASA sent a small research probe to research and photograph the Sun - our nearest star. The spacecraft is called the Parker Solar Probe. It made history on Christmas Eve by going closer to the Sun than any spacecraft before. It flew to within 6.1 million km of the Sun. Parker holds another record. It is the fastest object ever built. In September 2023, it flew at a speed of 635,266 kph. At this speed, it could travel from New York to Tokyo in just 1.025 minutes.
The Parker Solar Probe is named after an astrophysicist. He spent his life studying the Sun and its solar flares. He wanted to know why the flares are hotter than the Sun's surface. This mystery is known as the "coronal heating problem". The temperature at the Sun's surface is 4,100ºC; while the temperature of the corona's flares can reach 1.1 million degrees Celsius. Scientists also want to find out how solar winds originate. NASA said Parker has faced extreme heat on its record-breaking fly-by. Temperatures reached a baking 980 degrees Celsius.
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