NASA researchers announce that “for the first time in history, a spacecraft has touched the Sun.” Launched in 2018 to observe its coronal plasma and magnetic field, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe cut through the Alfvén critical surface—the edge of the Sun’s superheated atmosphere—on April 28 and entered its corona. “We can actually see the spacecraft flying through coronal structures that can be observed from Earth during a total solar eclipse,” said Nour Raouafi, the probe’s project scientist.