The Parker Solar Probe, launched by NASA in 2018, has flown closer to the Sun than any human-made object in history — traveling at more than 430,000 miles per hour with a heat shield that reaches 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit, while the instruments behind it stay at room temperature, protected by four and a half inches of carbon foam

At approximately 6:53 in the morning Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday, 24 December 2024 — while the substantial majority of the American public was engaged in various Christmas Eve preparations, and while the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory mission o…