The fastest spacecraft ever built is poised to break its own record.

The Parker Solar Probe is about to make its seventh encounter with Venus on its way to the Sun. And that's how fast it will fly

On September 30, 2024, Parker Solar Probe reached perihelion 21, its closest approach to the Sun.

The scientific questions answered by the Parker Solar Probe are fundamental to understanding the Sun, its corona, and space weather phenomena. By the end of its mission, Parker Solar Probe will have set a number of records and scientific achievements, including becoming the closest and fastest spacecraft ever to the Sun.

Currently perihelion is located only 7.87 million km from the surface of the Sun.

This image and graph shows Parker Solar Probe's path and distance relative to the Sun from its launch on August 12, 2018, until perihelion 21, which it reached on September 30, 2024.

Its new heat shield allows scientific operations to be carried out in such extreme conditions.

The Parker Solar Probe's heat shield, the topmost structure with a white aluminum oxide coating on the outer surface, is absolutely essential to protecting the vital instruments inside from the sun's catastrophic heat. If the heat shield fails, the entire probe will be destroyed within seconds.

At close range, the Sun appears 28 times larger than when observed from Earth.

From Earth, the Sun occupies an angle of about half a degree in the sky. From Parker Solar Probe's vantage point at perihelion, the Sun will appear about 28 times larger in diameter and more than 750 times larger in angular area.

Planets visible to the naked eye from Earth have been photographed in perfect alignment.

At its 5th perihelion, June 7, 2020, Parker Solar Probe looked back at Earth and was able to spot the six innermost planets of the Solar System in one frame on one side of the Sun's limb: Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, Earth and Mercury , as shown from left to right.

Parker currently reaches a top speed of 176 km/s: it is the fastest spacecraft of all time.

In addition, new, previously unseen phenomena are observed in it.

The solar wind, first detected by the Parker Solar Probe, exhibits magnetic reversals, where the magnetic field bends as particles move away from the Sun. This discovery has not yet been fully explained.

When Parker Solar Probe passed through the corona during the ninth encounter, the spacecraft flew by past structures called coronal streamers. These structures are visible as bright features moving upward in the top images and angled downward in the bottom row. This view is only possible because the spacecraft flew above and below streamers within the corona. Until now, streamers could only be observed from afar, for example, during total solar eclipses.

And he noticed how the clouds of Venus parted, revealing the Venusian surface.

As Parker Solar Probe flew past Venus on its fourth flyby, its WISPR instrument captured these animated images that show the planet's nighttime surface. The dark features emerging through the temporarily thin layer of clouds do indeed correspond to the Venusian surface.

Parker's space images are in perfect agreement with infrared maps “Magellan”.

Parker Solar Probe's monochrome WISPR data clearly matches surface features seen by the Magellan orbiter's much longer wavelengths than optical, shown in color. The Parker Solar Probe view of Venus is the first time Venus' clouds have parted to reveal the surface beneath.

But Parker's next stunt would be his greatest achievement: the closest gravity maneuver to a celestial body in history.

By passing outside the orbit of Venus as it moves toward the Sun, or passing within the orbit of Venus as it moves away from the Sun, the Parker Solar Probe may experience gravitational drag, resulting in a loss of energy and resulting in a closer perihelion than previous orbits. The seventh and final gravitational encounter with Venus will occur on November 6, 2024.

On November 6, he will approach Venus at a distance of 317 km, which will take away his kinetic energy.

Passing inside the orbit of Venus and deflecting towards the Sun (as shown in the figure) or outside the orbit of Venus and moving away from the Sun, the spacecraft can be accelerated using a “gravity sling” mechanism. The other two valid maneuvers will increase the speed of the spacecraft, resulting in an increase in speed rather than a decrease in speed.

As a result, it will be closer to the Sun than ever before.

This animation shows the trajectory of the Parker Solar Probe from its launch in 2018 until its expected retirement in 2025. A total of seven gravitational descents from Venus are planned, all of them will be accelerators, and the seventh and final meeting is scheduled for November 6, 2024.

On December 24, 2024, it will set new records for speed (192 km/s) and distance to the sun (6.9 million km).

This graph shows the speed of the Parker Solar Probe and its distance to the Sun. The various perihelia and flybys of Venus are shown as red and green dots, respectively. It is unknown whether Parker Solar Probe will survive past its 24th perihelion.

Next year, the heat of the Sun should finally disable this record-breaking spacecraft.

Solar coronal loops, such as the one observed by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) satellite in 2014, follow the path of the Sun's magnetic field. When these loops “break” in certain ways, they can emit coronal mass ejections that can impact Earth. The connection between the solar corona above the photosphere and external phenomena permeating the rest of the solar system is what spacecraft like the Parker Solar Probe are helping to illuminate by filling in gaps in observations of the Sun from Earth. It is expected that after 24-25 orbits, the Parker Solar Probe will begin to collapse under the influence of solar heat.