NASA probe is first spacecraft to enter sun's atmosphere, agency announces

NASA spacecraft Parker Solar Probe flew through the upper atmosphere of the sun, marking another historic first for the Space agency.

"The new milestone marks one major step for Parker Solar Probe and one giant leap for solar science," NASA wrote in a press release.

Slowly circling the sun, Parker entered the sun's corona in April and took samples of particles and magnetic fields, but scientists needed to verify their achievement. The announcement was made on Tuesday during the 2021 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in New Orleans. 

NASA Science Mission administrator Thomas Zurbuchen said it was "a monumental moment for solar science and a truly remarkable feat."

The probe was initially launched in 2018. The next anticipated flyby will be in January 2022 and will likely go through the corona again. Parker is expected to eventually get as close as 3.83 million miles from the star's surface, compared to being 8.1 million miles away in April.

NASA Heliophysics director Nicola Fox said, "I'm excited to see what Parker finds as it repeatedly passes through the corona in the years to come… The opportunity for new discoveries is boundless."

A paper on the milestone was published in the American Physical Society's Physical Review Letters.