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The probe surpbaded the previous record of 26.55 million miles from the star's surface on Monday, Oct. 29 around 1:04 pm ET.
The previous record was held by Helios 2, launched in 1976 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Base in Florida.
The Parker solar probe should now continue its approach, crossing the crown, or the sun's outside atmosphere, next week, to reach 15 million miles from its surface.
He will continue to break his own record over the next seven years, completing 24 approaches closer, reaching 3.83 million miles from the sun in 2024.
"It's been only 78 days since Parker Solar Probe was launched, and we are now closer to our star than any other spacecraft in history," said Andy Driesman, of the John Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in the Maryland, in a statement.
"It's a moment of pride for the team, even if we stay focused on our first solar encounter, which starts on October 31st."
The Parker will also break the world record for the fastest satellite moving relative to the sun. The record was previously held by Helios 2 in 1976, which reached a heliocentric (or relative sun) speed of 153,454 miles at the time.
The probe embeds a number of state – of – the – art instruments allowing NASA scientists to collect vital data in order to answer the fundamental questions relating to the star closest to the Earth.
"We've been studying the sun for decades and we're finally going to go where the action is," said Alex Young, deputy director of science at the heliophysics division of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. in Maryland, said before the launch of the probe in August.
Nicky Fox, project manager at Parker Solar Probe, added, "Solar energy is still flowing through our world, and even if the solar wind is invisible, we can see it surround the poles like auroras, which are beautiful – But there's a tremendous amount of energy and particles in our atmosphere, we do not really understand the mechanisms that drive that wind towards us, and that's what we're going to discover. "
Scientists want to respond to phenomena that have baffled researchers for decades, including the causes of solar wind acceleration and geomagnetic storms.
They will also study why the solar corona is significantly warmer, at several million degrees Fahrenheit, than its surface, which remains at around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
"It's a bit like you're getting away from a campfire and you're suddenly getting a lot hotter," Fox said.
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