# Parker Solar Probe

*Spacecraft*

Flies closer to the Sun than anything ever has - inside ten solar radii, through the corona itself - behind a carbon shield that reaches 1,400 °C while the instruments behind it stay at room temperature. It is there to find out why the corona is hundreds of times hotter than the surface below it and what accelerates the solar wind, and it lowers its approach with repeated Venus flybys.

| | |
| --- | --- |
| Agency | NASA |
| Launched | 2018-08-12 - still working |
| From the Sun | 14,756,169 km (+7,254,480 km/d) |
| From the Earth | 153,982,997 km (-5,107,864 km/d) |
| A signal takes | 9 min |
| Travelling at | 125.1 km/s |

Distances and speed are computed from JPL Horizons trajectories and are true of 2026-09-05, changing at the rate given beside each. The interpolation itself is good to a few kilometres; what ages these figures is the date, not the arithmetic.

## Path

A loop round the Sun that is lowered a step at a time. Each Venus flyby drops the near end - now inside ten solar radii - while the far end stays out by Venus, so it comes round every 88 days and spends only hours in the corona.

## Along the way

- 2018-10-03 — First Venus flyby, the first of seven that lower the loop
- 2018-11-06 — First perihelion, already closer to the Sun than anything had been
- 2021-04-28 — Flew inside the corona - into the Sun's atmosphere
- 2024-12-24 — Closest approach: 6.1 million km from the surface, at 690,000 km/h

## Elsewhere

- On the live map: https://www.orbitalmap.space/?world=solar-system&focus=parker
- The mission's own page: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/parker-solar-probe/
- This object as a page: https://www.orbitalmap.space/o/parker/
- Every object: https://www.orbitalmap.space/o/
- What this site is and what it reads: https://www.orbitalmap.space/llms.txt