But further study is needed to make a confirmation. The Parker team said early data also suggested the spacecraft may have entered the corona during its ninth close pass in August. They said the spacecraft was able to go in and out of the corona at least three times. The scientists reported Parker was about 13 million kilometers from the center of the sun when it crossed the boundary between the solar atmosphere and the solar wind. Results were also published by the American Physical Society. Scientists announced the findings during a meeting of the American Geophysical Union. “We can actually see the spacecraft flying through coronal structures that can be observed during a total solar eclipse,” Raouafi said. He added that the evidence used to confirm the findings included data on magnetic fields and the solar wind, as well as images. The spacecraft is now able to sense conditions in the magnetically-influenced corona for the very first time, Raouafi said. Raouafi called the finding " fascinatingly exciting.” He is with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. Nour Raouafi is the project scientist on the mission. NASA has described the spacecraft’s entry into the outermost atmosphere as successfully “touching” the sun. Scientists say being able to study the solar wind and the corona close up can help them better understand how solar activity influences Earth. The Parker Solar Probe was launched in 2018 with a main goal of studying the solar wind. The solar wind is the flow of charged particles, known as plasma, released from the corona into space.
Some solar material escapes and is released into space in what is known as the solar wind. Instead, it is a superheated ball of material held together by gravity and magnetic forces.
Unlike Earth, the sun does not have a solid surface. They said it took them a few months to examine data from the spacecraft and to confirm the result. The Parker Solar Probe traveled through the solar atmosphere’s outer edge – known as the corona – in April, scientists announced this week. The American space agency NASA says a spacecraft has entered the sun’s outermost atmosphere for the first time.
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