I'm John Batchel with Bob Zimmerman behind the black. We're going exploring.

Bob, what is Parker?

John, Parker Solar Probe was launched a few years ago to orbit the Sun closer and closer and closer

and closer to gather data of the inner solar atmosphere of inner atmosphere of the sun, the corona,

but to do so in a very, very dangerous way.

It's designed to be able to resist the very intense energy

and heat of the sun,

but this is still pretty risky.

It has been moving closer and closer with each orbit.

On Christmas Eve this year, the Parker Solar Probe set a record.

It got within 3.8 million miles above the surface of the sun.

That's only, what is it about, 20 times longer than the moon is from the Earth.

This is really close.

And it did so.

It was traveling at 430,000 miles per hour.

That's the fastest any human-made object has ever moved.

But it did that fly-by.

And the question was, would it survive the passage?

It's not other close-ups that were

closed flybys that were not much different. And so, yes, it's excessive. We now have

data from the spacecraft that it not only survived the flyby in great shape, which was not

unexpected, but it also gathered actual science data, which will be

...