NASA’s intrepid solar spacecraft conquers second close encounter with the sun

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has successfully completed its second close flyby of the sun, the space agency announced earlier this week.

The car-sized spacecraft swooped within 8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) of the sun’s surface at a whopping 430,000 miles per hour (692,000 kilometers per hour), matching the historic record it set during its encounter on Christmas Eve last year.