Image copyright NASA-JHU-APL Image caption Artwork: Parker must always keep its heatshield pointed at the Sun

America's audacious mission to "touch the Sun" has now got nearer to our star than any previous human-made object.

The Parker Solar Probe passed the current record of 42.73 million km (26.55 million miles) from the Sun's surface on Monday.

The previous record was set by the German-US Helios 2 satellite back in April 1976.

That mission also set the all time speed record of close to 70km/s (43 miles/s). Parker will smash this, too.

The expectation is that it will eventually reach peak speeds around 190km/s (690,000km/h; 428,700mph).

Parker was launched from Earth in August. It's on a trajectory that will take it inside the Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona.

Information from this region promises to crack longstanding mysteries about our star's behaviour.

Parker's elliptical orbit will edge closer to the Sun over the coming years. At its closest approach, the probe will get to just 6.12 million km (3.83 million miles) from the star's broiling "surface".

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Parker scientist Dr Nicky Fox: "Never before have we gone up and literally touched our star"

Why is this mission important?

Parker will help us better understand how the Sun works.

The star is constantly bombarding the Earth with charged particles and magnetic fields. This perpetual flow, or "solar wind", is responsible for generating the beautiful auroral lights that appear in polar skies, but there are some interactions that initiate much more troubling effects.

The biggest outbursts from the Sun will rattle the Earth's magnetic field. In the process, communications may be disrupted, satellites can be knocked offline, and power grids will be vulnerable to electrical surges.

Scientists try to forecast these "storms" and Parker promises new and valuable information to help them do that.

Image copyright S R Habbal and M Druckmüller Image caption The diffuse corona is only visible to us on Earth during a total solar eclipse

Why go so close to the Sun?

Parker wants to get where the action is.

The corona is a remarkable place. It's strangely hotter than the Sun's actual surface, or photosphere. While this can be 6,000 degrees, the outer atmosphere may reach temperatures of a few million degrees.

The mechanisms that produce this super-heating are not fully understood.

Likewise, the corona is the place where the solar wind gets its big kick in speed, sweeping out across the Solar System at more than 500km/s (a million mph).

Parker aims to solve these puzzles by directly sampling the corona's particle, magnetic and electric fields.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos</s>NASA’s historic Parker Solar Probe -- enroute to the Sun to unravel its mysteries -- has become the closest spacecraft to it.

The spacecraft passed the current record of 26.55 million miles from the Sun’s surface on October 29, as calculated by the Parker Solar Probe team, NASA said in a statement on Monday.

The previous record for closest solar approach was set by the German-American Helios 2 spacecraft in April 1976.

As the Parker Solar Probe mission progresses, the spacecraft will repeatedly break its own records, with a final close approach of 3.83 million miles from the Sun’s surface expected in 2024.

“It’s been just 78 days since Parker Solar Probe launched, and we’ve now come closer to our star than any other spacecraft in history,” said Project Manager Andy Driesman from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

“It’s a proud moment for the team, though we remain focused on our first solar encounter, which begins on October 31,” Driesman added.

The Parker Solar Probe team periodically measures the spacecraft’s precise speed and position using NASA’s Deep Space Network or DSN.

Parker Solar Probe will begin its first solar encounter on October 31, continuing to fly closer and closer to the Sun’s surface until it reaches its first perihelion -- the point closest to the Sun -- on November 5.

“The spacecraft will face brutal heat and radiation conditions while providing humanity with unprecedentedly close-up observations of a star and helping us understand phenomena that have puzzled scientists for decades,” said NASA.

Earlier this month, the probe successfully completed its first fly-by of Venus at a distance of about 1,500 miles.

Throughout its mission, the probe will make six more Venus gravity assist and 24 total passes by the Sun.</s>NASA’s Parker Solar Probe reaches closest to the Sun than any spacecraft ever (video)

The $1.5 billion mission will take humanity closer to the Sun than ever before

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has clinched the record for closest approach to the Sun by a man-made object, the space agency confirmed Monday.

Scientists calculated that the spacecraft surpassed the current record of 26.55 million miles from the Sun’s surface at about 1:04 p.m. EDT Monday. The previous record was set in April 1976 by the Helios 2 spacecraft.

“It’s been just 78 days since Parker Solar Probe launched, and we’ve now come closer to our star than any other spacecraft in history,” said Parker Solar Probe Project Manager Andy Driesman, of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, in a statement.

Parker blasted off on its odyssey atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket in the early hours of Aug. 12, 2018.

The $1.5 billion mission will take humanity closer to the Sun than ever before. Parker will be the first spacecraft to fly through the Sun’s corona, the outermost part of the star’s atmosphere. It is expected to arrive at the Sun in November.</s>Here Comes the Sun

The Parker Solar Probe, humanity's first-ever mission into the Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, has become the closest human-made object to ever approach our star.

The space agency said in a statement on Monday that Parker passed the current record of 26.55 million miles (42.73 million km) from the Sun's surface. Yet, the spacecraft is gradually shrinking its orbit around the sun, with the final objective being 3.83 million miles (6.16 million km) from the surface. The previous record was set by the German-American Helios 2 probe in April 1976.

"It's been just 78 days since Parker Solar Probe launched, and we've now come closer to our star than any other spacecraft in history," said Project Manager Andy Driesman.

It also emerged on Monday that the mission set the speed record for spacecraft traveling relative to the Sun, surpassing 153,454 mph (shy of 247,000 km/h) and breaking the record set by Helios 2 back in 1976.

The Parker Solar Probe blasted off from Cape Canaveral air force station in Florida on August 13.

During its 7-year mission, the probe will complete 24 orbits of the Sun, coming within 3.8 million miles of its surface, and dip into the corona, the plasmic aura that is even hotter than the surface.

The craft will seek to unlock some of mysteries about our Sun's behavior by sampling the corona, the birthplace of solar flares and other violent events, and get a better understanding of how solar winds are formed.

NASA expects to get the first batch of data in December, but the spacecraft has another mission: it holds a memory card with the names of over 1.1 million people who signed up to "travel" to the Sun. The probe is equipped with a carbon heat shield to prevent it from roasting.</s>The solar probe just broke two all-time records on its way to 'touch' the sun.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe — the world’s first mission to “touch” the sun — has ventured closer to the sun than any other man-made object before it, NASA announced earlier this week.

The spacecraft officially broke the world record for the closest approach to the sun on October 29, at about 1:04 p.m. EDT. At the time, the Parker Solar Probe got closer than 26.55 million miles (42.7 million kilometers) from the sun’s surface.

As the Inquisitr previously reported, up until now the record belonged to the German-American Helios 2 mission — which managed to come as close as 26.98 million miles (43.4 million kilometers) to our star on April 17, 1976.

“It’s been just 78 days since Parker Solar Probe launched, and we’ve now come closer to our star than any other spacecraft in history,” said Andy Driesman, who manages the project at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “It’s a proud moment for the team, though we remain focused on our first solar encounter.”

Throughout its seven-year mission, the Parker Solar Probe has surpassed its own incredible feat time and time again, as the spacecraft prepares to perform a total of 24 orbits of the sun. During the final orbit, scheduled for 2024, the Parker Solar Probe will travel through the sun’s fiery atmosphere — known as the solar corona — coming within 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) from the surface of the sun.

“We’re getting closer to ‘touching’ the Sun!” NASA tweeted on Monday.

But wait, there’s more. Nearly 10 hours after smashing this impressive record, NASA’s intrepid spacecraft obliterated yet another one — also previously held by the Helios 2 mission.

“At about 10:54 p.m. EDT, Parker Solar Probe surpassed 153,454 miles per hour — as calculated by the mission team — making it the fastest-ever human-made object relative to the sun,” NASA revealed in a subsequent blog post.

The formidable spacecraft set two new records on the same day and is on its way to even greater achievements. In 2024, the Parker Solar Probe is expected to reach a top speed of about 430,000 miles per hour — or 0.0006 percent the speed of light, notes Gizmodo.

Last month, the Parker Solar Probe set its sights back on Earth and snapped a lovely space portrait of our home planet, the Inquisitr recently reported.

Next up for the pioneering spacecraft is the first solar encounter — an exciting phase that begins today and will set the Parker Solar Probe on the path to its first perihelion next week. According to NASA, the probe is scheduled to reach this first closest point to the sun on November 5 about 10:28 p.m. EST.</s>Parker Solar Probe now holds the record for closest approach to the Sun by a human-made object. The spacecraft passed the current record of 26.55 million miles from the Sun’s surface on Oct. 29, 2018, at about 1:04 p.m. EDT, as calculated by the Parker Solar Probe team.

The previous record for closest solar approach was set by the German-American Helios 2 spacecraft in April 1976. As the Parker Solar Probe mission progresses, the spacecraft will repeatedly break its own records, with a final close approach of 3.83 million miles from the Sun’s surface expected in 2024.

“It’s been just 78 days since Parker Solar Probe launched, and we’ve now come closer to our star than any other spacecraft in history,” said Project Manager Andy Driesman, from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “It’s a proud moment for the team, though we remain focused on our first solar encounter, which begins on Oct. 31.”

Parker Solar Probe is also expected to break the record for fastest spacecraft traveling relative to the Sun on Oct. 29 at about 10:54 p.m. EDT. The current record for heliocentric speed is 153,454 miles per hour, set by Helios 2 in April 1976.

The Parker Solar Probe team periodically measures the spacecraft’s precise speed and position using NASA’s Deep Space Network, or DSN. The DSN sends a signal to the spacecraft, which then retransmits it back to the DSN, allowing the team to determine the spacecraft’s speed and position based on the timing and characteristics of the signal. Parker Solar Probe’s speed and position were calculated using DSN measurements made on Oct. 24, and the team used that information along with known orbital forces to calculate the spacecraft’s speed and position from that point on.

Parker Solar Probe will begin its first solar encounter on Oct. 31, continuing to fly closer and closer to the Sun’s surface until it reaches its first perihelion — the point closest to the Sun — at about 10:28 p.m. EST on Nov. 5. The spacecraft will face brutal heat and radiation conditions while providing humanity with unprecedentedly close-up observations of a star and helping us understand phenomena that have puzzled scientists for decades. These observations will add key knowledge to NASA’s efforts to understand the Sun, where changing conditions can propagate out into the solar system, affecting Earth and other worlds.</s>NASA’s much-hyped mission to “touch the Sun” has only been underway for a couple of months, but it’s already achieved something that no other spacecraft before it has. The plucky Parker Solar Probe is now closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft before it, coming within 26.55 million miles of our star on October 29th, and of course it’s still pushing onward.

Its current distance from the Sun is still quite large, but that’ll change as the probe continues to creep closer and closer, eventually reaching just a few million miles from the center of the Solar System. Its closest approach should bring it within 3.83 million miles of the star, which is why the spacecraft had to be outfitted with such extraordinary protection technology.

“It’s been just 78 days since Parker Solar Probe launched, and we’ve now come closer to our star than any other spacecraft in history,” Andy Driesman, project manager of the mission, said in a statement. “It’s a proud moment for the team, though we remain focused on our first solar encounter, which begins on Oct. 31.”

The spacecraft will begin its first distant pass of the Sun on October 31st and reach its closest point (of this particular pass) on November 5th. The probe will continue to make passes of the Sun for several years, and it won’t reach its closest point until sometime in 2024. Along the way, the probe will send back all kinds of data and readings as it studies the Sun’s outer atmosphere and helps scientists better understand what makes it tick.

The probe will continue to break records along the way, with each pass breaking new ground for human scientific efforts. So you should do your best to get familiar with the mission, because you’re no doubt going to be hearing a whole lot about it over the next half decade or more.</s>Just over 11 weeks after its launch atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has already beaten the record for the closest spacecraft to the Sun — and it’s only going to get closer.

According to NASA, the Parker Solar Probe passed the record of 26.55 million miles (42.73 million kilometers), set by the Helios 2 spacecraft in April 1976, at about 1:04 p.m. EDT (17:04 GMT) on Oct. 29, 2018.

“It’s been just 78 days since Parker Solar Probe launched, and we’ve now come closer to our star than any other spacecraft in history,” Project Manager Andy Driesman, from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, said in a NASA news release. “It’s a proud moment for the team, though we remain focused on our first solar encounter, which begins on Oct. 31.”

As the Parker Solar Probe continues to fly in its solar orbit, it will periodically swing by Venus to use the planet’s gravity to gradually get closer to the Sun with a final close approach distance estimated to be about 3.83 million miles (6.24 million kilometers) by 2024, NASA said. For comparison, Mercury — the closest planet to the Sun — orbits at an average distance of about 35.98 million miles (57.90 million kilometers).

The spacecraft’s first Venus flyby occurred Oct. 3, 2018. It’s next won’t be until Dec. 26, 2019. In total, the Parker Solar Probe is expected fly by the planet seven times through 2024.

In addition to setting new proximity records, the Parker Solar Probe is breaking speed records too. At 10:54 p.m. EDT Oct. 29 (2:54 GMT Oct. 30), the spacecraft beat Helios 2’s April 1976 speed record of 153,454 mph (246,960 kph) relative to the Sun. By the time the mission is at its closest in 2024, it will be flying by the Sun at about 430,000 mph (690,000 kph).

The next major milestone for the probe will be its first perihelion, or closest point in its orbit around the Sun. That is expected to occur at about 10:28 p.m. EST Nov. 5 (3:28 GMT Nov. 6), 2018.

Launched Aug. 12, 2018, the Parker Solar Probe is designed to be the first spacecraft to fly into the Sun’s corona. According to NASA, the mission has three main science objectives: trace the flow of energy that heats and accelerates the corona and solar wind, determine the structure and dynamics of the plasma and magnetic fields at the sources of the solar wind, and explore mechanisms that accelerate and transport energetic particles.

Derek Richardson has a degree in mass media, with an emphasis in contemporary journalism, from Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. While at Washburn, he was the managing editor of the student run newspaper, the Washburn Review. He also has a blog about the International Space Station, called Orbital Velocity. He met with members of the SpaceFlight Insider team during the flight of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 551 rocket with the MUOS-4 satellite. Richardson joined our team shortly thereafter. His passion for space ignited when he watched Space Shuttle Discovery launch into space Oct. 29, 1998. Today, this fervor has accelerated toward orbit and shows no signs of slowing down. After dabbling in math and engineering courses in college, he soon realized his true calling was communicating to others about space. Since joining SpaceFlight Insider in 2015, Richardson has worked to increase the quality of our content, eventually becoming our managing editor. @TheSpaceWriter</s>NASA’s solar probe has officially broken 1972 the record set by the Helios 2 spacecraft, to become the closest space probe to approach the Sun. The technology broke the previous record of 26.55 million miles from the Sun on Tuesday, October 29. US space agency NASA boasted in a statement the Parker Solar Probe will continue to break even more records as it makes numerous approaches to the star. NASA launched the exploration probe to the Sun less than 80 days ago, on August 12, on a first of its kind mission to study the Sun’s corona.

During its mission, the probe will dip in and out of orbit around the Sun reaching within 3.83 million miles of its scorching surface. Andy Driesman, Parker project manager, said: “It’s been just 78 days since Parker Solar Probe launched, and we’ve now come closer to our star than any other spacecraft in history. “It’s a proud moment for the team, though we remain focused on our first solar encounter, which begins on October 31.” Not content with just being the closest ever probe to the Sun, NASA expected the spacecraft to break a speed record on Tuesday night as well.

The space agency said the probe was well on its way to break the 153,454 mph milestone set by the Helios 2 in April 1976.

On October 31, the day of Halloween, NASA will begin its first so-called solar encounter with the burning star. After that, the space probe will gradually creep closer to the Sun’s surface until it reaches its closest possible distance on November 5. NASA said: “The spacecraft will face brutal heat and radiation conditions while providing humanity with unprecedentedly close-up observations of a star and helping us understand phenomena that have puzzled scientists for decades.

“These observations will add key knowledge to NASA’s efforts to understand the Sun, where changing conditions can propagate out into the solar system, affecting Earth and other worlds.” The NASA Parker Solar Probe blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, US, this summer. NASA and the Applied Physics Laboratory at John Hopkins University in Laurel, Maryland are operating the mission. The spacecraft was designed to study energised particle ejections and solar winds escaping the Sun’s outer corona.</s>NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has just become the closest ever human-made object to the Sun, passing the current record of 26.55 million miles away from the surface.

The spacecraft broke the long-standing record on October 29, 2018 at about 1.04pm EDT. The German-American Helios 2 spacecraft made the previous closest solar approach all the way back in April 1976.

The Parker Solar Probe is set to continually make and break the record for the next few years, ending with a final close encounter of just 3.83 million miles from the Sun’s surface in 2024.

“It’s been just 78 days since Parker Solar Probe launched, and we’ve now come closer to our star than any other spacecraft in history,” said project manager Andy Driesman from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, in a statement.

“It’s a proud moment for the team, though we remain focused on our first solar encounter, which begins on October 31st.”

The probe has work to do today to reach that first brush with the Sun and is expected to break the record for the fastest craft relative to the star at about 10.54pm EDT. The current record for heliocentric speed was also set by Helios 2 in April 1976 and clocked in at 153,454 miles per hour.

Using the Sun’s own gravity to assist, the spacecraft is expected to reach a mind-boggling speed of 430,000 miles per hour. That will not only break the heliocentric speed record but also make it the fastest object ever made by human hands, as my colleague Jesse Hanahan put it.

The Parker Solar Probe will endure brutal conditions of heat and radiation during its seven-year mission to answer key questions about our star, including why its corona is so hot.

The corona is the halo around the Sun that we typically see here on Earth during a solar eclipse, although its effects can also be seen in the aurorae it causes when interacting with the magnetosphere. The surface of the Sun is roughly 10,000˚F, but the corona is much hotter at several million degrees – and scientists have no idea how since the Sun’s energy is generated at its core.

The spacecraft will loop around the Sun through this blisteringly hot corona over 20 times to try to figure that out, along with how solar energy particles and solar winds are accelerated.
NASA's Parker Solar Probe spacecraft becomes the closest ever sent to the sun, by passing 42.7 million km (26.6 million miles) from the sun's surface. The previous record was set in 1976 by the Helios 2 spacecraft. Parker's elliptical orbit will eventually take it to within 6.1 million km (3.8 million miles) of the sun.