NASA spacecraft touches the Sun for the first time

A NASA spacecraft has officially ‘touched’ the sun, falling through the corona, an unseen region of the solar atmosphere.

Scientists made the announcement at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union on Tuesday.

During the Parker Solar Probe’s seventh close encounter to the sun in April, the spacecraft sailed through the corona. The data took a few months to arrive, and then several more months to confirm.

‘Fascinatingly intriguing,’ said Johns Hopkins University project scientist Nour Raouafi.

When Parker, the spacecraft, first crossed the jagged, uneven boundary between the solar atmosphere and outgoing solar wind, it was 8 million miles (13 million kilometres) from the sun’s centre. According to scientists, the spacecraft dipped in and out of the corona at least three times, each time with a smooth transition.