This Tuesday (6), NASA's Parker Solar probe approached the Sun for the 13th time, staying just 8.5 million kilometers from our star
The flyby took place at 3:04 am ET, and while the Sun has been showing a lot of activity lately, the spacecraft has yet to encounter any solar flares or geomagnetic storms — but that could change next month.
The approach began last Thursday (1st), and the spacecraft encountered a very different solar environment.
Nour Raouafi, a project scientist at Parker Solar, pointed out that the Sun has completely changed since the mission's launch in 2018 — at that time, our star was at solar minimum , the least active stage of its cycle.
“When the Sun changes, it also changes the environment around it; activity at this point was higher than we expected,” he said.
The mission team believes that solar activity will continue to increase. Therefore, it is possible that the spacecraft will experience some solar event during future approaches.
"No one has ever flown through a solar event so close to the Sun," noted Raouafi.