Prof. Parker's Speed Merchant Flies Onward: With Eighth Solar Lap A Complete Success!

It must be said -- speed, more than almost any other attribute / quality -- is to be admired. On the tartan, in the 220 or 440; on the hardcourt -- exploding into the middle of the lane. . . in whippy smart repärteé. . . or, out in vast inky space. . . in this case, to avoid overheating one's fairly fragile electronics, as one dips very near a vastly-glowing white-hot coal. She is moving at about a third of a million miles an hour -- the fastest human made craft, in all of history.

NASA's Johns Hopkins Lab has done it again -- now for an eighth time -- in a virtual blur. Here's the latest, on Prof. Parker's blazingly fast lil' ship -- humming around the front side, again:

. . .On May 2, 2021, at 3:00 a.m. EDT, mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, in Laurel, Maryland, received a “tone one” beacon from Parker Solar Probe, indicating that all systems were healthy and operating normally after the spacecraft’s eighth close approach to the Sun on April 29.

During this close pass by the Sun — called perihelion — Parker Solar Probe broke its own records for spacecraft distance from the Sun and speed, coming to within about 6.5 million miles (10.4 million kilometers) of the Sun’s surface, while moving faster than 330,000 miles per hour (532,000 kilometers per hour).

Science data collection for this solar encounter continues through May 4. . . .

Blaze on, you speed merchant! Grinning, now -- be excellent to one another. . . .

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