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With its shrunken polar cap and its large apparent angular size, Mars is viewed here during Martian … [+]
On October 6, 2020, Mars makes its closest approach to Earth until 2035.
Earth orbits in a nearly circular path, completing a revolution every 365 days. Mars orbits in the … [+]
Earth and Mars both orbit the Sun in the same direction, but
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is set to break a record tomorrow, becoming the closest-ever human-made object to the sun. The probe will break its own previous record, coming within 8.4 million miles of the sun’s surface and traveling at 289,927 miles per hour.
This will be the probe’s sixth flyby of the sun since it was launched in 2018. As it orbits around the sun, it gets gradually closer and closer with each pass, and over the summer it got an extra boost by using the gravity of Venus to adjust its trajectory. In July this year, the probe came within just 518 miles of the surface of Venus, and the gravitational assist from this maneuver allowed the probe to get 3.25 million miles closer to the sun than its last pass in June.
This flyby will also be the first time that the probe will pass within 0.1 AU