NASA's Parker Solar Probe is alive!

Two days after a historic Christmas Eve sun flyby that flew closer to the star than any spacecraft in history — taking the car-sized spacecraft nearly a tenth as close to the sun than Mercury — the Parker Solar Probe phoned home for the first time since its solar encounter. The space probe sent a simple yet highly-anticipated beacon tone to Earth just before midnight late Thursday (Dec. 26).

Scientists on Earth were out of contact with the Parker Solar Probe since Dec. 20, when the spaceraft began its automated flyby of the sun, so the signal is a crucial confirmation that the spacecraft survived, and is in "good health and operating normally," NASA shared in an update early Friday (Dec. 27).

Mission control at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland received the signal just before midnight ET on the night of Dec. 26, the statement read. . . .

The fact that the spacecraft survived such a close pass by the sun is a testament to the mission team's engineering, including a custom, 4.5-inch-thick heat shield and an autonomous system that protects the probe from the sun's intense heat while allowing it to point toward our star and let the coronal material touch the spacecraft. While the heat shield allows the spacecraft to endure temperatures up to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,371 degrees Celsius), the probe likely ended up experiencing lower — but nevertheless sizzling — temperatures of up to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (980 degrees Celsius), the mission team has previously said.