The Parker Solar Probe has taken a big step forward, and solar science has taken a big step forward. Scientists will be able to learn a lot more about the Sun and how it affects the solar system if they touch the material that makes up the Sun. This is similar to how landing on the Moon helped them figure out how it was made. When Parker Solar Probe “touches the Sun,” it’s a big deal for solar science, says Thomas Zurbuchen, who is in charge of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “Not only does this milestone give us more information about our Sun’s history and how it affects our solar system, but everything we learn about our own star also helps us learn more about stars in the rest of the universe.”
Parker is getting closer to the surface of the sun, and as it does, it’s making new discoveries that other spacecraft couldn’t see. These discoveries come from inside the solar wind, which is the flow of particles from the sun that can affect us on Earth. In 2019, Parker found that magnetic zig-zag structures in the solar wind, called switchbacks, are common near the Sun. They are found in the solar wind. But they didn’t know how or where they came from. Since then, Parker Solar Probe has come close enough to the Sun to be able to figure out where they come from the solar surface.
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Data on things that can’t be seen from afar will keep coming from the first flyby of the corona and the promise of more. When Parker Solar Probe flies so close to the Sun, it can now see things in the magnetically dominated layer of the sun’s atmosphere called the corona that we couldn’t before. Nour Raouafi, a project scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, said this: Images show us that we are in the corona based on magnetic field data, solar wind data, and magnetic field data. During a total solar eclipse, we can see the spacecraft flying through coronal structures that can be seen in the sky.
