This New Year's Day, NASA's Parker Solar Probe added to the festive cheer by sending home its first detailed telemetry data soon after its record-breaking closest-ever approach to the sun.

Update: After an initial delay, the Parker Solar Probe successfully launched at 3:31am EST, Sunday August 12th.. Early Saturday morning, the skies above Cape Canaveral will light up with the ...

And the Parker Solar Probe also has the distinction of being the first NASA spacecraft named after a living person. At the time of its launch, in August 2018, physicist Eugene Parker was 91 years old.

NASA's Parker Solar Probe is on a mission to study the sun closer than ever before. Learn more about the fastest spacecraft to date in our solar probe guide.

NASA probe sets record as closest object to the sun 02:22. NASA's Parker Solar Probe has beamed home its first detailed update eight days after making a record-breaking approach to the sun, the ...

And yet, for all this slowing down, the Parker Solar Probe will "be the fastest human-made object in existence," says Driesman. When Parker slings around the sun at closest approach, it will hit a ...

NASA's Parker Solar Probe survived the latest endeavor in its mission to “touch” the sun – flying just 3.8 million miles above the star’s surface – in its closest-ever approach on ...

Solar heat isn’t the only threat to the Parker Solar Probe. The region around the sun is also expected to be full of dust, left over from the formation of the planets.

Dr. Eugene Parker is seen with a model of the Parker Solar Probe on May 31, 2017. Scott Olson/Getty Images Parker was the first living person to have a spacecraft named after him.

While Parker tried to determine the origins of the solar wind before, it was in the wrong position, focused on a region of the Sun’s far side that was too distant to see what was going on in ...