Getting Closer to the Sun: A Solar Probe’s Record-Breaking Journey

It’s one thing to read about a spacecraft flying toward the sun, but another to see it up close. I'll never forget the time I got to visit NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Maryland. Seeing the models of the Parker Solar Probe and hearing about its mission was inspiring. To top it off, I even had the chance to meet Dr. Nickola Fox, a key scientist on the mission who used to work right there at Goddard. Now, as the Heliophysics Division Director at NASA Headquarters, she’s helping to lead the entire field of sun science. That memory makes the probe’s recent achievement feel even more real and exciting.

On September 18, 2025, the Parker Solar Probe made another daring flyby of our star, flying closer than any spacecraft before. During this approach, the probe reached a jaw-dropping top speed of 687,000 kilometers per hour (about 430,000 miles per hour). This incredible velocity is a new record for any human-made object, and it’s a direct result of the probe’s spiraling orbit around the sun.

Managed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Maryland, the probe is on a mission to solve two of the biggest mysteries about our star: why the sun’s outer atmosphere, called the corona, is so much hotter than its surface, and how the solar wind is accelerated to supersonic speeds.

By flying directly into the corona, the probe is providing scientists with a "front-row seat" to the action. The data it collects on solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and the solar wind is critical for understanding "space weather" that can impact our satellites, power grids, and even astronauts in space. The mission is a part of NASA's Living With a Star (LWS) program, which, as I learned at Goddard, focuses on understanding how the sun directly affects Earth and society.

This latest flyby is another huge step forward in a mission that is fundamentally changing our understanding of our star. The information the probe is sending back will not only help us better predict solar storms but will also pave the way for safer future missions to the moon and Mars.