On Dec. 24, NASA's Parker Solar Probe will get closer to the sun than any human-made object ever has before. The spacecraft is the size of a small car, and it has been orbiting the sun for the past six years. In 2021, it became the first spacecraft to enter the sun's upper atmosphere — known as the corona — about 6.5 million miles from the sun's surface, according to NASA.
Every three months, it completes a full revolution around the sun, gradually getting closer to the sun. This year, on Christmas Eve, it is expected to get within approximately 3.9 million miles from the sun's surface while traveling about 430,000 miles an hour.
NPR's Manoush Zomorodi interviewed project scientist Nour Rawafi, an astrophysicist based at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
"We are getting close and personal with a star," Rawafi told Zomorodi. "Sometimes it's like a dream. But you are living it."
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