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Early on the morning of Christmas Eve, we got closer to the sun than ever before.

We have been waiting for this moment since 1958. On Christmas Eve of this year,

we will be embracing a star. I'm dreaming of that moment. It's Tuesday, December 24th, and you're

listening to Science Friday. I'm SciFRI producer Rasha Irides. This morning at around 6.40 a.m., NASA's Parker Solar probe made its 22nd close approach to the sun, and its nearest one yet.

It swooped into just under 4 million miles away from the sun's surface.

We spoke with the program's project scientists last week to learn more.

Here's Ira Flato. Since the probe was launched back in 2018, it has helped scientists to better

understand our closest star, solve some of its mysteries about solar wind, high energy solar particles,

the corona, and lots more.

And now scientists hope that this up-close and personal view will reveal even more about the energy source we all depend on for our existence.

Here to discuss is Dr. Nura Wafi, the project scientist for NASA's Parker Solar Probe mission

and astrophysicist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland.

Dr. Ruwafi, welcome to Science Friday.

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure of talking to you.

Oh, it's our pleasure. Let's talk about the Parker Solar Probe. I know that on December 24th, it's going to set a record for the closest approach to the sun ever, and we're talking just 3.8 million miles. And given that the Earth is 93 million miles away, this is pretty darn close, is it not? It's extremely close.

If you think of it, I mean, it's only 4% of the sun-earth distance, which is very, very close.

And the fascinating thing, for people who saw the eclipse on April 8th of this year,

Parka solar probe will be flying through the structures we saw during that eclipse.

So it's so fascinating to be so close to a star, because our sun, the star, is the biggest object in the whole solar system. By itself, it weighs more than 99.8% of the total mass of

the solar system.

And it drives almost everything.

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