Nasa solar probe becomes the fastest thing ever created by humans

A NASA spacecraft has become the fastest object ever made by humans as it travelled around the Sun.

The Parker Solar Probe fell through the Solar System at 635,266 kph (394,736 mph) on 27 September, smashing the previous record of 586,863 kph, which it also set in 2020.

Those numbers don’t mean a great deal on their own. To put it in perspective, an aircraft travelling at the new record speed would be able to travel around the planet 15 times in a single hour.

The Parker Solar Probe also came within record range of the Sun, about 7.26m kilometres away from the star’s surface. Nothing has ever got that close before.

It hit these speeds by using the gravitational pull of other nearby objects – namely the planed Venus – to put it on a trajectory that will draw it ever closer to the Sun as it orbits the star.

So far it’s circled it 17 times, and it has another seven laps to go before it actually collides with the burning hot mass of plasma.

The mission is mainly aimed at finding out what happens in the Sun’s corona, the outermost part of its atmosphere. They want to know how and why the super-hot solar wind gets accelerated as it leaves the star.

The craft has a heat shield, onboard radiators and a thermal protection system to protect it from solar storms.

For the rest of this year and next, it will make four more orbits of the Sun getting ever closer to it.

Then, in late 2024, it will fly near Venus for the final time, whose gravitational field will set its trajectory for three more orbits before it finally gets too close for comfort and the mission comes to an end.

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