Spacecraft Enters the Sun’s Blistering Hot Corona for the First Time in History

NASA Parker Solar Probe Artist's Concept

Artist’s concept of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL

An instrument made by scientists and engineers at the Center for Astrophysics has helped verify that — for the first time in history — a spacecraft has entered the corona of the Sun.

A spacecraft launched by NASA has done what was once thought impossible. On April 28, the Parker Solar Probe successfully entered the corona of the Sun — an extreme environment that’s roughly 2 million degrees Fahrenheit.

The historic moment was achieved thanks to a large collaboration of scientists and engineers, including members of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) who built and monitor a key instrument onboard the probe: the Solar Probe Cup. The cup collects particles from the Sun’s atmosphere that helped scientists verify that the spacecraft had indeed crossed into the corona.

“The goal of this entire mission is to learn how the Sun works. We can accomplish this by flying into the solar atmosphere,” says Michael Stevens, an astrophysicist at the CfA who helps monitor the cup. “The only way to do that is for the spacecraft to cross the outer boundary, which scientists call the Alfvén point. So, a basic part of this mission is to be able to measure whether or not we crossed this critical point.”


NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has now done what no spacecraft has done before—it has officially touched the Sun. Launched in 2018 to study the Sun’s biggest mysteries, the spacecraft has now grazed the edge of the solar atmosphere and gathered new close-up observations of our star. This is allowing us to see the Sun as never before—including the findings in two new papers, which were presented at AGU, that are helping scientists answer fundamental questions about the Sun. Credit: NASA GSFC/CIL/Brian Monroe

The corona is the outermost layer of the Sun’s atmosphere where strong magnetic fields bind plasma and prevent turbulent solar winds from escape. The Alfvén point is when solar winds exceed a critical speed and can break free of the corona and the Sun’s magnetic fields. Prior to April 28, the spacecraft had been flying just beyond this point.

“If you look at close-up pictures of the Sun, sometimes you’ll see these bright loops or hairs that seem to break free from the Sun but then reconnect with it,” Stevens explains. “That’s the region we’ve flown into — an area where the plasma, atmosphere and wind are magnetically stuck and interacting with the Sun.”

According to data collected by the cup, the spacecraft entered the corona three times on April 28, at one point for up to five hours. A scientific paper describing the milestone has been accepted for publication in the Physical Review Letters.


Parker Solar Probe has now “touched the Sun”, passing through the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona for the first time in April 2021. The boundary that marks the edge of the corona is the Alfvén critical surface. Inside that surface (circle at left), plasma is connected to the Sun by waves that travel back and forth to the surface. Beyond it (circle at right), the Sun’s magnetic fields and gravity are too weak to contain the plasma and it becomes the solar wind, racing across the solar system so fast that waves within the wind cannot ever travel fast enough to make it back to the Sun. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Ben Smith

CfA astrophysicist Anthony Case, the instrument scientist for the Solar Probe Cup, says the instrument itself is an incredible feat of engineering.

“The amount of light hitting the Parker Solar Probe determines how hot the spacecraft will get,” Case explains. “While much of the probe is protected by a heat shield, our cup is one of only two instruments that stick out and have no protection. It’s directly exposed to the sunlight and operating at a very high temperature while it’s making these measurements; it’s literally red-hot, with parts of the instrument at more than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit [1,000 degrees Celsius], and glowing red-orange.”

To avoid degradation, the device is constructed of materials that have high melting points, like tungsten, niobium, molybdenum, and sapphire.

But the success of the Parker Solar Probe represents much more than technological innovation. There are many mysteries about Earth’s closest star that scientists are hoping the probe can help solve.

For example, “We don’t actually know why the outer atmosphere of the Sun is so much hotter than the Sun itself,” Stevens says. “The Sun is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit [5,500 degrees Celsius], but its atmosphere is about 3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit [2 million degrees Celsius].”

He adds, “We know that the energy comes from the churning magnetic fields bubbling up through the surface of the sun, but we do not know how the Sun’s atmosphere absorbs this energy.”

In addition, outbursts from the Sun, like solar flares and high-speed solar winds, can have a direct impact on Earth, disrupting power grids and radio communication.

The Parker Solar Probe can help better understand all these phenomena as it continues to orbit the Sun and take measurements and data for scientists to analyze here on Earth.

Case says, “The plasma around the Sun can act as a laboratory that teaches us about processes taking place in almost every astronomical object across the entire universe.”

The historic achievement of the Parker Solar Probe was announced at a press conference at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). The press conference panel included former CfA scientist Justin Kasper and Kelly Korreck who is currently on rotation at NASA headquarters. Both worked on the probe during their tenure at the CfA.

About SWEAP

The Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons (SWEAP) investigation is overseen by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. SWEAP is a set of four instruments on the Parker Solar Probe, the Solar Probe Cup and three Solar Probe ANalyzer sensors that measure ions and electrons. Other members of the SWEAP team include the University of California, Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory; University of Michigan; the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center; the University of Alabama Huntsville; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Los Alamos National Laboratory; Draper Laboratory; Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory; and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

About the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian is a collaboration between Harvard and the Smithsonian designed to ask—and ultimately answer—humanity’s greatest unresolved questions about the nature of the universe. The Center for Astrophysics is headquartered in Cambridge, MA, with research facilities across the U.S. and around the world.

For more on this story, see NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Touches the Sun for the First Time.

Reference: “I Enters the Magnetically Dominated Solar Corona” by J. C. Kasper et al., 14 December 2021, Physical Review Letters.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.255101

5 Comments on "Spacecraft Enters the Sun’s Blistering Hot Corona for the First Time in History"

  1. Kennedy atta-Bonsu | January 5, 2022 at 3:52 pm | Reply

    I cannot find land on the sun

  2. I wonder if anyone remembers the Ray Bradbury short story, GOLDEN APPLES OF THE SUN. It is about a space ship mission to the sun to “scoop up” a sample of the sun for study and analysis. It is too bad Mr. Bradbury did not live long enough to see this become a reality. I read this story as a boy in the 1960s and I am astonished to see it become an achievement as well.

  3. अमन प्रकाश अवस्थी | January 5, 2022 at 10:49 pm | Reply

    सूर्य से निकलने वाली गैस जलकर सूर्य के बाहरी वातावरण कोरोना को बनाती हैं जिस तरह गैस का बर्नर कभी लाल नहीं होता और उस पर रखी जाने वाली वस्तु जलकर लाल हो जाती है

  4. Little slow on the uptake there scitech, this was already reported on weeks ago.

  5. I really wish they would leave sh*t alone frfr why what is the purpose

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