The NASA Parker spacecraft is busy with important things, because this is the first artificial mechanism that approaches the maximum possible distance to the Sun and studies the outer corona of a star.
Previously, missions were sent to the star of the solar system, but they studied the sun from afar. If we talk about the previous record, it belongs to the apparatus Helios-2, approaching 42.73 million km to the Sun. But on November 5, 2018, the Parker mission broke this record with a figure of 15 million km!
It is worth noting that this was only the first perihelion (the closest point of the orbit to the star) of the 26 planned. The mission should last until 2025, so now only 8.6% is fulfilled.
The Parker probe is preparing to go through the second perihelion on April 4, where the distance to the star will be about 24 million km and its speed - 343,000 km / h. Each new passage of the perihelion point will allow you to move closer to the Sun and increase the speed. The closest approach should fall on December 2024 (22nd perihelion), where the distance between the probe and the Sun will be only 6.2 million km.
Recall that the spacecraft will allow to answer important questions: what is the cause of acceleration of the solar wind, how charged particles accelerate to near-light speeds, what is the structure and dynamics of magnetic fields, how does the solar plasma, etc. it was wrapped in a 12-centimeter layer of thermal protection.
