NASA's Parker Solar Probe made the closest ever flyby of the Sun in August 2018, collecting massive amounts of data using cutting-edge scientific instruments from a distance of 15 million miles - a mission that also, incidentally, set the record for the fastest-ever human-made object of all time.
Four new papers published in the journal Nature on Wednesday reveal new findings that could rewrite the way we understand the way stars are born, evolve, and die.
They could also help us find new ways to protect astronauts from harsh space weather during long distance trips through the Solar System.
"The complexity was mind-blowing when we first started looking at the data," said Stuart Bale, lead researcher for the probe's onboard instrument suite at the University of California, Berkeley.
"Now, I've gotten used to it. But when I show colleagues for the first time, they're just blown away.The scientists also found that the Sun's radiation vaporizes cosmic dust particles around itself, leaving a 3.5 million mile (5.6 million kilometre) dust-free zone.
They also found that solar winds rotate around the Sun at speeds "nearly ten times larger than predicted by the standard models," according to Kasper.
The mission also marks the first time that solar wind flows were observed still rotating around the Sun, rather than shooting off at a perpendicular velocity from the star - the kind of straight trajectories we observe from Earth.
"The Sun is the only star we can examine this closely," Nicola Fox, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters, said in the statement.
"Getting data at the source is already revolutionizing our understanding of our own star and stars across the universe. Our little spacecraft is soldiering through brutal conditions to send home startling and exciting revelations."
The probe will be attempting to get even closer to the Sun during an encounter on January 29, 2020.
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