It approaches to within 9.86 solar radii (6.9 million km or 4.3 million miles) from the center of the Sun, and by 2025 it will travel, at closest approach, as fast as 690,000 km/h (430,000 mph), or 0.064% the speed of light. It is the fastest object ever built. At closest approach Parker Solar probe hurtles around the sun at approximately 430,000mph. That's fast enough to get from philadelphia to Washington, D.C. in a second. Perils it had to deal or overcome to make this record breaking journey: This mission required an extensive knowledge base and multiple teams working in conjunction to bring this flight to fruition. The spacecraft was exceptionally complex, with multiple systems that were redundant, and required an extremely large portion of the schedule to be dedicated to testing. The Autonomy system had to be very robust as the mission is designed to have large periods of time where the spacecraft will be out of contact with the Earth. PSP was also mass constrained; all of the systems had to fit into a relatively small bus that restricted the integration order of operations and limited the amount of activities that could be performed in parallel. Due to these numerous challenges, the team had to be very flexible and adaptable to the needs of the spacecraft and the mission. From the integration of the bus at APL, to environmental testing at the Goddard Space Flight Center, to the final pre-flight processing at Astro-tech Space Operations and on the Delta IV Heavy launch vehicle at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, PSP was a learning experience every step of the way. In the end it was all worth it the time, the efforts, the capital, the resources every investment was worth it, we can clearly see the results now. Solar parker probe is truly a record breaking journey.
Parker solar probe is returning a treasure trove of science data that will be analyzing for decades to come, it is a mission for the ages. It's helping us to know and study the facts about sun and how it influences the very nature of space Observations from helio-physics missions space whether events that can impact life and technology on earth and in space. It has also studied about the comets, detected radio emissions from Venus, atmosphere, and even captured the first ever image of Venus surface in visible wavelengths. With it's closet pass of the sun still ahead in 2024, only time will tell what new discoveries await. Complex engineering of parker solar probe: How did the parker solar probe not melt? The environment where parker solar probe was, was not very dense. It was able to survive the extreme temperature due to the thermal shield that is made of carbon composite material, with standing up to 2,500- degrees Fahrenheit or 1377 degree celcius. The parker solar pro has 7 sensor on outside to detect heat when it is not fully facing towards the sun. So, it can reorient. The instrument behind the serials are kept at 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Your play station may be more hotter.