The facility, situated in the Tidbinbilla Valley, received the beacon late on Boxing Day, which revealed that the probe had passed 3.8 million miles from the solar surface on Christmas Eve – the closest fly-by in history.
Parker launched in 2018 and aims to gather key data on solar wind and the sun’s upper atmosphere, known as its corona.
The ACT complex’s Glen Nagle told the ABC the signal was strong and said the team was “very proud” to play a role in the historic moment.
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“In our control room, our team was very busy making sure that one of our antennas here was in contact with the spacecraft, waiting for a beacon tone to indicate that it had successfully survived its encounter with the sun,” he said.
NASA later revealed the Parker hurtled through the solar atmosphere at 430,000 miles per hour (692,000km/h) – faster than any human-made object has ever moved.
“Flying this close to the sun is a historic moment in humanity’s first mission to a star,” said Nicky Fox, who leads the Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington.
“By studying the sun up close, we can better understand its impacts throughout our solar system, including on the technology we use daily on Earth and in space, as well as learn about the workings of stars across the universe to aid in our search for habitable worlds beyond our home planet.”
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A previous fly-by of Venus in November helped prepare the spacecraft for its Christmas Eve approach, allowing it to reach optimal orbit.
The oval-shaped trajectory brings the probe to an ideal distance from the sun every three months – close enough to study the sun’s mysterious processes but not too near to become overwhelmed by the heat and damaging radiation.
NASA said the spacecraft will remain in this orbit for the remainder of its primary mission.
“Parker Solar Probe is braving one of the most extreme environments in space and exceeding all expectations,” said Nour Rawafi, the project scientist for Parker Solar Probe at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), which designed, built, and operates the spacecraft.
“This mission is ushering a new golden era of space exploration, bringing us closer than ever to unlocking the sun’s deepest and most enduring mysteries.”
The spacecraft uniquely relies on a carbon foam shield to protect it from the extreme heat in the corona, which can exceed 1 million degrees Fahrenheit (555,540 Celsius).
NASA added that the shield was designed to reach temperatures of 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit (1,426 degrees Celsius) – hot enough to melt steel – while keeping the instruments behind it shaded at a “comfortable room temperature.”
In the hot but low-density corona, the spacecraft’s shield is expected to warm to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (980 Celsius).
“It’s monumental to be able to get a spacecraft this close to the sun,” said John Wirzburger, the Parker Solar Probe mission systems engineer at APL. “This is a challenge the space science community has wanted to tackle since 1958 and had spent decades advancing the technology to make it possible.”
Parker’s close fly-by means it can take measurements that help scientists better understand how the region gets so hot, trace the origin of the solar wind (a constant flow of material escaping the sun), and discover how energetic particles are accelerated to half the speed of light.
“The data is so important for the science community because it gives us another vantage point,” said Kelly Korreck, a program scientist at NASA Headquarters and heliophysicist who worked on one of the mission’s instruments. “By getting firsthand accounts of what’s happening in the solar atmosphere, Parker Solar Probe has revolutionised our understanding of the sun.”
The Deep Space Network (DSN), meanwhile, is NASA’s international array of giant radio antennas that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions, operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
In total, the DSN consists of three facilities – at Goldstone in California, Madrid in Spain and Canberra in Australia – that are spaced equidistant from each other.
After its Canberra facility opened in 1964, it has played a crucial role in some of NASA’s most high-profile missions, including Apollo and Voyager.
More recently, it established two-way communication with Europa Clipper – NASA’s landmark mission to the icy moon of Jupiter – after it blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center.
Adam Thorn
Adam is a journalist who has worked for more than 40 prestigious media brands in the UK and Australia. Since 2005, his varied career has included stints as a reporter, copy editor, feature writer and editor for publications as diverse as Fleet Street newspaper The Sunday Times, fashion bible Jones, media and marketing website Mumbrella as well as lifestyle magazines such as GQ, Woman’s Weekly, Men’s Health and Loaded. He joined Momentum Media in early 2020 and currently writes for Australian Aviation and World of Aviation.
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