Less than two months after takeoff from Cape Canaveral, a solar probe from NASA spent Wednesday in front of Venus to clarify its path to the sun.

The morning flyover less than 1,500 km from the second planet of the sun was the first of seven that the $ 1.5 billion Parker solar probe launched on Aug. 12 on a United Launch Alliance Delta rocket IV, will take place over seven years.

"Venus is very important to us," said Nicola Fox, a project scientist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, before the launch. "We use Venus to slow us down a bit, really to center our orbit, almost as if we were doing a handbrake ride and focusing on the sun."

While it may have slowed down a bit, the 1,400-pound probe is accelerating to more milestones this month.

On October 30, NASA is waiting at a cruising speed of 153,454 mph, making it the fastest spacecraft ever seen compared to the sun, surpassing the mark established in 1976 by Helios 2 .

Parker's first "solar encounter", which makes scientific observations, begins at Halloween and continues until November 11th. This data will be redirected in December.

The mission to "touch" the sun over seven years will complete 24 petal-shaped loops through the outer atmosphere of our star, our crown, flying within 3.8 million kilometers of the sun. A composite carbon heat shield measuring less than five inches thick will protect the probe from temperatures as high as 2500 degrees Fahrenheit.

Scientists hope to understand why the corona is hundreds of times warmer than the surface of the sun and understand the physics that accelerates the flow of energetic particles known as the solar wind at supersonic speeds, knowledge that could improve weather forecasts.

The probe is the first named by NASA for a living person: the physicist Eugene Parker of the University of Chicago, who predicted in 1958 the existence of the solar wind. Parker, 91, visited the Kennedy Space Center to witness the take-off of his eponymous mission.

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