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(CNN) – NASA's solar probe Parker has broken the world record for the closest approach to the sun ever reached by a man-made spacecraft – and it does not stop yet.
The spacecraft surpassed the previous record of 26.55 million miles from the star's surface on Monday, Oct. 29 at around 1:04 pm.
The previous record was held by Helios 2, launched in 1976 from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Air Base in Florida.
Parker's solar probe should now continue its approach, crossing the crown, or the outside atmosphere of the sun, next week, to approach within 15 million kilometers of 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 remain focused on our first solar encounter, which will start 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 enabling NASA scientists to collect vital data to answer fundamental questions about the Earth's closest star.
"We've been studying the sun for decades and we're finally going to action," said Alex Young, deputy director of science at the heliophysical science division of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. the launch of the probe in August.
Nicky Fox, Scientific Lead for Parker Solar Probe, added, "Solar energy is still flowing beyond our world. And even if the solar wind is invisible, we can see it encircle the poles like auroras, beautiful – but revealing the enormous amount of energy and particles that are spreading in our atmosphere. We do not understand very well the mechanisms that lead this wind towards us and that is what we seek 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 like you're running away from a campfire and you're suddenly getting a lot hotter," Fox said.
The Parker Solar Probe is NASA's first aircraft to bear the name of a living astrophysicist. Eugene Parker, 91, proposed the notion of solar wind.
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