NASA’s Parker Solar Probe successfully travels closest to the Sun.
Do you know the fastest man-made object?
If not, then know that the Parker Solar Probe, developed by the American space agency NASA, is the fastest human vehicle.
It has set the record for the fastest man-made object by traveling 430,000 miles per hour.
Before that, this record was held by the Parker Solar Probe, which it had set some time ago by traveling at a speed of 397,736 miles per hour.
Parker Solar Probe set a new record by getting closest to the Sun. Equipped with a shield to protect it from the Sun’s heat, this mission went 3.8 million miles closer to the surface of the Sun.
That is, the Parker Solar Probe went seven times closer to the Sun than any other mission.
The mission is designed to travel to the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, which is affected by powerful solar storms. The spacecraft flew as close to the Sun as possible to understand the star in our solar system.
The mission passed close to the Sun on December 24, but it will send a beacon tone to Earth on December 27 to confirm its safety.
The nearly 10-foot-long spacecraft orbited the Sun 22 times to get closest to it.
With each orbit, it got closer to the Sun’s corona, and the Parker Solar Probe’s speed increased steadily.
Keep in mind that the Sun is 333,000 times larger than our planet in terms of volume, so orbiting it requires a lot of speed. So while approaching the Sun, the mission set a new record by traveling at a speed of 430,000 miles per hour.
So how fast is 430,000 miles per hour?
This can be estimated from the fact that the International Space Station is orbiting the Earth at a speed of 17,000 miles per hour. Similarly, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket traveled at a speed of about 21,000 miles per hour in 2021.
During its journey to the closest approach to the Sun, the mission also collected important data about the Sun’s corona.
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