NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has now marked itself safe from its closest-ever encounter with the sun.
The probe sent a signal just before midnight on Dec. 26, saying it was “alive” and doing fine. This should come as a relief to NASA scientists since communication with the probe “went dark” Christmas Eve when it made its record-breaking closest ever pass — a mere 3.8 million miles from the sun’s surface, according to a NASA blog.
That might seem like a big distance, but in the universe, everything is relative. If the Earth and sun marked opposite end zones of an American football field, the probe’s latest pass took it to the sun’s four-yard line.
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