Nasa spacecraft has officially “touched” the sun. It has reached through the unexplored solar atmosphere known as the corona. Scientists announced the news on Tuesday during a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

The Parker solar probe actually flew through the corona in April during the spacecraft’s eighth close approach to the sun. But scientists said it took a few months to get the data back and then several more months to confirm.

"Parker Solar Probe “touching the Sun” is a monumental moment for solar science and a truly remarkable feat," said Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

He said, "Not only does this milestone provide us with deeper insights into our Sun's evolution and it's impacts on our solar system, but everything we learn about our own star also teaches us more about stars in the rest of the universe.”

“Flying so close to the Sun, Parker Solar Probe now senses conditions in the magnetically dominated layer of the solar atmosphere – the corona – that we never could before,” said Nour Raouafi, the Parker project scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

He said, “We see evidence of being in the corona in magnetic field data, solar wind data, and visually in images. We can actually see the spacecraft flying through coronal structures that can be observed during a total solar eclipse.”

Parker was launched in 2018. It is 8m miles (13m kilometers) from the centre of the sun when it first crossed the jagged, uneven boundary between the solar atmosphere and outgoing solar wind.

The spacecraft dipped in and out of the corona at least three times, each a smooth transition, according to scientists.

“The first and most dramatic time we were below for about five hours ... Now you might think five hours, that doesn’t sound big”, the University of Michigan’s Justin Kasper told reporters.

But he also said that Parker was moving so fast that it covered a vast distance during that time.

Preliminary data suggest Parker also dipped into the corona during its ninth close approach in August, but scientists said more analyses are needed. It made its 10th close approach last month.

Parker will keep drawing ever closer to the sun and diving deeper in to the corona until its grand finale orbit in 2025. The latest findings were also published by the American Physical Society.

Parker Solar Probe is part of NASA’s Living with a Star program to explore aspects of the Sun-Earth system that directly affect life and society.

The Living with a Star program is managed by the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, manages the Parker Solar Probe mission for NASA and designed, built, and operates the spacecraft.

Image credit: India today