NASA has schedule an former Christmas present for solar investigator on Tuesday , December 24 , when the Parker Solar Probe will snuff it 6.1 million kilometers ( 3.8 million mile ) from the Sun – tight than it or any other space vehicle has ever give-up the ghost before . get into it survives the experience in a condition to keep sending back data , the Probe will reach like distances in March and June 2025 , but there ’s nothing quite like a first passage .
physicist have in the past calculated that Father Christmas would need to go at around 10 million kilometers an hour ( 6,000,000 miles per hour ) to visit and deliver presents to every child . At this fraction of the speed of light , Dr Katy Sheen of the University of Exeter noted in 2016 , relativistic effects would take lieu that could explain many of the morecurious aspectsof the story .
NASA lags somewhat behind . The Parker Solar Probe has setone recordafteranotherfor the fast homo - made object , at least relative to such schematic reference point as the Earth and the Sun . Its current disk , set up last year , is 635,266 km per hour ( 394,736 miles per hour ) a sixteenth of the stop number flying Greenland caribou can reportedly provide .
The investigation travel on an stretch orbit , voyaging out to near the sphere of Venus , between passes more than ten metre closer to the Sun . Each fourth dimension Venus is there to meet it on the outer part of its journeying , the Probe receive a gravitational boost , increasing its velocity and allowing passage even closer to the Sun .
The latest – and last – such encounter with Venus occurredon November 6 , and now Parker has reaped the welfare . Tomorrow it will get more than a million km closer to the Sun than ever before . By Kepler ’s natural law , closer transition requires greater upper , and Parker will attain around 692,017.9 kilometers per hour ( 430,000 miles per hour ) tomorrow . That ’s rough 0.06 per centum of the speed of ignitor – not fast enough for relativistic effects to be mensurable without very sensible instrument .
Already , the mission has pass through the Sun ’s atmosphere , as well as acoronal mass ejection . Inevitably , this closer passage will expose the mission to unprecedented temperatures and high - muscularity molecule . The probe was designed to be able to survive these conditions thanks to its carbon - composite plant shell , but there must be limit point . No more encounters with Venus are scheduled , so all further orbital adjustments must be made with the investigation ’s dwindle away supplies of propellant .
The close approaching will take place at 11:53:48 UTC , but scientist keen to learn what Parker has discover will have to wait to unwrap their nowadays . Transmissions from the probe have been deflect by its proximity to the Sun since Saturday , and will not resume until Friday .
" This is one example of NASA ’s bold mission , doing something that no one else has ever done before to respond longstanding questions about our universe , " articulate NASA ’s Dr Arik Posner in astatement . " We ca n’t wait to receive that first condition update from the spacecraft and start receiving the skill data in the come calendar week . "
" No human - made object has ever passed this close-fitting to a star , so Parker will rightfully be returning data from uncharted district , " added Nick Pinkine of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory .
