On Tuesday, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe swooped closer than it ever had before to the sun, just a few million miles above its blazing hot surface.

The team behind the mission waited nervously. Then, a few minutes shy of midnight Thursday, Parker phoned home.

The probe sent back not one but four signals indicating it was healthy, according to Nour Rawafi, an astrophysicist and the project scientist of the mission.

With the help of Venus’ gravity, Parker has crept closer and closer to the sun with a series of flybys since its launch in 2018. In the early stages of the mission, the team was anxious about the spacecraft getting so close. But over time, Parker’s successful orbits — 21 and counting — built confidence.

Still, there was some fear that the probe might not survive this time. Parker’s heat shield is designed so that the front of the vehicle can withstand facing the blistering heat of the sun’s outer atmosphere, which reaches millions of degrees, while the back, which contains the probe’s sensitive instruments, sits at a comfortable 85 degrees.

— The New York Times