Delhi To New York In 1 Minute: NASA's Parker Solar Probe Equals Record Speed

NASA's pioneering Parker Solar Probe scripted history on Thursday (Sep 18) by completing its 25th Sun flyby. The spacecraft communicated the success by establishing contact with flight controllers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland -- having been out of contact with Earth and operating autonomously during the close approach.

During the mission, the spacecraft equalled its record-setting speed of 687,000 km per hour that was previously set during close approaches on December 24, 2024; March 22, 2025 and June 19, 2025. Assuming the speed is constant, it would take Parker Solar Probe 61 seconds or just over a minute to reach New York from Delhi. Currently, it takes a nonstop flight anywhere between 15-17 hours to reach the Big Apple from the Indian capital.

NASA has been conducting these flybys to gather 'unrivalled measurements' of the solar wind and solar activity while the Sun is in a more active phase of its 11-year cycle. The data from the current encounter will be transmitted to Earth, starting Tuesday (Sep 23).

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Parker's objectives

By venturing into these extreme conditions, Parker has been helping scientists tackle some of the Sun's biggest mysteries: how the solar wind originates, why the corona is hotter than the surface below, and how coronal mass ejections -- massive clouds of plasma that hurl through space -- are formed.

"Parker's observations of the solar wind and solar events, such as flares and coronal mass ejections, are critical to advancing humankind's understanding of the Sun and the phenomena that drive high-energy space weather events that pose risks to astronauts, satellites, air travel, and even power grids on Earth," NASA said in a statement.

Managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, the Parker Solar Probe was launched in 2018 as part of NASA's Living With a Star (LWS) programme. It has been gradually circling closer towards the sun, using flybys of Venus to gravitationally pull it into a tighter orbit with the sun.