On June 27, 2023, NASA's Parker Solar Probe completed its 16th orbit around the Sun. This includes a near approach to the Sun (known as perihelion) on June 22, 2023, when the spacecraft was travelling at 364,610 miles per hour and reached within 5.3 million miles of the solar surface. The spacecraft was unharmed and working normally after the solar flyby.
Parker Solar Probe will make its sixth flyby of Venus on August 21, 2023. To ensure a smooth track, the mission crew at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) performed a modest trajectory adjustment manoeuvre on June 7, 2023, the first-course correction since March 2022. This will be the sixth of seven scheduled flybys of Venus during Parker's main mission. Parker utilises Venus' gravity to shorten its orbit around the Sun and set up a future perihelion only 4.5 million miles from the Sun's surface. As the Sun grows more active, this perihelion will become increasingly essential in understanding more about heliophysics.
Parker Solar Probe was designed as part of NASA's Living With a Star programme to investigate components of the Sun-Earth system that have a direct impact on life and civilization. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the Living With a Star programme for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. APL planned, constructed, and operates the spacecraft, as well as managed the mission for NASA.