World's fastest object completes NASA sun mission Story by Stacy Liberatore For Dailymail.com and William Hunter • 1h World's fastest object completes NASA sun mission A NASA probe made history Christmas Eve after becoming the closest human-made object to the sun, a feat scientists say was as historic as the Apollo moon landing. The Parker Solar Probe zoomed within just 3.8 million miles of the sun's surface at 6:53am ET. Moving at speeds of up to 430,000mph and enduring temperature of up to 1,800F, the car-sized probe 'touched' the sun to help scientists better understand the star. During that brief flyby, it passed through the sun's super-hot outer atmosphere called the corona - the origin of solar storms which have the potential to cause chaos on Earth.

World's fastest object completes NASA sun mission Although the Parker probe endured boiling temperatures, its near-indestructible heat shield should allow it to survive the extreme conditions. However, mission scientists will have to wait until Friday for confirmation as they lose contact with the craft for several days due to its proximity to the sun. Thomas Zurbuchen, former head of science for NASA, said: 'NASA's Parker Solar Probe has accomplished a feat that is as historic and significant as the moon landing.' Nick Pinkine, Parker Solar Probe mission operations manager at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), said: 'No human-made object has ever passed this close to a star, so Parker will truly be returning data from uncharted territory .'

The Christmas Eve flyby is the first of three record-setting close passes, with the next two - on March 22, 2025, and June 19, 2025 - both expected to bring the probe back to a similarly close distance from the sun. The Parker Solar Probe launched from Cape Canaveral in August 2018 before embarking on the 93 million-mile journey to the sun. The goal was to gather more data about the sun's corona by flying as close as possible through the stellar atmosphere. Because the gravitation pull is so strong at this distance, the probe needs to be moving incredibly fast to avoid slipping into the heart of the sun.

To do this, the probe has been repeatedly 'slingshot' around the sun and Venus, getting progressively faster with each pass. In 2021, Parker made its first successful pass of the solar corona, dipping into a region where temperatures can reach over one million degrees Centigrade for up to five hours . Since then, Parker has completed 21 solar slingshots, but tomorrow the probe will smash its own record for both speed and distance. After completing its seventh loop around Venus in November, Parker used that 'gravity assist' to fly seven times closer to the star than any other spacecraft .

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