Parker's challenges

 

The solar probe has faced some challenges while carrying out its mission, among these challenges:

There were some problems in the testing and the software of Parker Solar Probe, so the launching was delayed to August 12, 2018.

On January 14, 2020, NASA's Parker Solar probe recorded another sound resembling old TV static, that sound is actually the dust from asteroids torn apart by the Sun’s gravity and solar heating. These particles stripped from comets strike the spacecraft at speeds close to a quarter of a million mile per hour.

On April 28, 2021, during its eighth flyby of the Sun, Parker Solar Probe encountered specific magnetic and particle conditions at 18.8 solar radii (about 8.1 million miles) above the Sun's surface, telling scientists that it had crossed the Alfvén surface (the boundary separating the sun's corona from the solar wind) for the first time and finally entered the solar atmosphere.

On Feb 15, 2022, the large solar prominence blasted tons of charged particles in the spacecraft's direction but the spacecraft was built to withstand activity just like this to get data in the most extreme conditions.

The spacecraft team has noticed that occasionally the star tracking cameras used as part of the guidance and control system see reflected light from dust and shattering particles that can momentarily disrupt their ability to see stars, however this doesn’t compromise the safety of spacecraft or instrument operations, as the star trackers aren’t the spacecraft’s only method of controlling where it points.