Nasa’s Parker Solar Probe breaks record for fastest man-made object as it flies at up to 213,200mph in mission to ‘touch the sun’
The probe is starting a seven-year, $1.5billion mission to decrypt some of the sun's greatest mysteries
A NASA probe has smashed the record for the fastest man-made object with speeds of up to 213,200mph.
But it is just getting started on a series of accomplishments that make the mind boggle.
The car-size Parker Solar Probe also broke the record for the closest approach to the sun, whilst surviving some of the solar system's harshest conditions.
Right now, it is charging through the outer atmosphere of the sun, which is about 3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit.
NASA launched the robot in August aboard a powerful rocket - the start of a seven-year, $1.5billion mission to decrypt some of the sun's greatest mysteries.
The Parker Solar Probe is expected to easily survive this solar flyby, though its operators won't know until later this week whether anything went wrong.
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Parker Solar Probe will be completely out of contact with Earth because of interference from the sun's overwhelming radio emissions," the space agency said in a press release.
Its orbit will bring the spacecraft within about 15 million miles of the sun's surface. That's about one-sixth of the distance from the Earth to the sun.
However, this perihelion will be only the first of the Parker probe's 24 death-defying solar encounters.
The Parker Solar Probe is expected to get within 3.8 million miles of the sun by 2024.
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