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Things are heating up for the USA's National Aeronautical Space Administration (NASA). One of the agency's missions is to study the Sun. In 2018, NASA sent a small research probe to photograph 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 has ever gone before. Parker flew to within 6.1 million kilometers of the Sun. This is very close. Parker also holds another record. It is the fastest object ever built by humans. In September 2023, it flew at a speed of 635,266 kph. At this speed, the probe could travel the 10,846 km from New York to Tokyo in just 1.025 minutes.
The Parker Solar Probe is named after the astrophysicist Dr Eugene Parker. He spent most of his life studying the Sun and its solar flares. He wanted to know why the flares, which shoot off from the Sun's surface, are hotter than the surface. This is known as the "coronal heating problem". It is a long-standing mystery for scientists. The temperature at the Sun's surface is around 4,100ºC; while the temperature of the corona's flares can reach 1.1 million degrees Celsius. Scientists also hope to find out how solar winds originate. NASA said Parker (the probe) has faced extreme heat on its record-breaking fly-by. Temperatures reached a scorching 980 degrees Celsius.
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