The Parker Solar Probe took off from earth in 2018 and has been spending its time bouncing from Venus to the sun and back again, each time getting closer to the sun. On December 24th, it is expected to come within 3.8 million miles of the sun's surface. Nicki Rayl, NASA’s deputy director of heliophysics, calls that "literally touching the star" because the probe will be in the sun's upper atmosphere. And you didn't know the sun had an atmosphere.
The Parker probe is there just in time to catch the sun at the apex of its eleven-year activity cycle, when the magnetic poles move, sunspots appear, and geomagnetic storms flare out into the solar system. But that's what it was sent for, to collect valuable data about the sun from a vantage point never before possible. The probe will be close enough to experience temperatures of 1700 degrees. How will it survive? Read about the purpose of the Parker Solar Probe and the extreme design that allows it to handle temperatures of up to 2500 degrees, at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben)
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