Waiting for Parker Solar Probe to Phone Home

Holding our breath is a little melodramatic because it has been out of communication since last Friday, but Friday, Dec. 27th should be the day NASA hears back from the Parker Solar Probe after the closest approach to the sun by any probe in history.  This screen capture from the mission's home page at the JHUAPL shows all the important numbers at the moment I grabbed the image.  As the fine print in the lower right corner says, these are values at that moment, and not the max or minimum of this phase of the mission.

The Parker Solar Probe flew within 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) of the solar surface to "touch the sun" on Tuesday in what was the closest approach to the star by any human-made object. At the time, the spacecraft was streaking by the sun at a mind-blowing 430,000 mph (690,000 kph), making it the fastest spacecraft ever, NASA has said. It was expected to experience scorching hot temperatures of up to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (980 degrees Celsius) during the encounter.

Before the maneuver started on last Friday night (Dec. 20), the probe sent a beacon transmission "indicating all spacecraft systems were operating normally," NASA officials said in a update at the time.  That was the last time the spacecraft was heard from.  They say:. 

A more robust status update from Parker Solar Probe is expected on New Year's Day, Jan. 1, when the probe is programmed to beam its first telemetry and housekeeping data to Earth since the flyby. It's only then, Buckley said, that scientists will know if the spacecraft collected the expected observations of the sun from the flyby.

The Parker solar probe is one of the boldest, most ambitious missions ever planned.  

In order to get close to the sun, the Parker Solar Probe flew by Venus seven times to snag gravity boosts that accelerated up to its current speed. It also swung around the sun 21 different times, speeding up at getting ever closer with each pass. The Dec. 24 flyby marked the 22nd sun flyby by the Parker Solar Probe, and is the closest the probe will get to the star. It has at least two more orbits ahead at the same speed and distance from the sun, NASA has said.

“This is one example of NASA’s bold missions, doing something that no one else has ever done before to answer longstanding questions about our universe,” said Parker Solar Probe program scientist Arik Posner at NASA Headquarters in Washington in a Dec. 20 statement. "We can’t wait to receive that first status update from the spacecraft and start receiving the science data in the coming weeks."

The sun has been fairly quiet in terms of flares and solar eruptions pointed our way since last Friday and we have every reason to think that the spacecraft was designed for the temperature excursions and other aspects of the close approach to the sun it will see, so it should be fine.  It's still a bit nerve-racking to wait for the radio contact.

EDIT 0845AM ET Dec 27: The JPL Website reports this morning:

Latest News | December 26, 2024

NASA's Parker Solar Probe Reports Successful Closest Approach to Sun

It seems that Space.com said, "around midnight on Friday (Dec. 27)" and I read that as not midnight when the 26th becomes the 27th - late Thursday night - but as the very end of the day on the 27th. 

EDIT 0945AM ET Dec 27: It's not the JPL. It's the JHUAPL (APL), which is the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Laurel Md.  See the comments below.