The spacecraft passed just 3.8 million miles (6.1 million km) from the solar surface on Dec. 24, flying into the sun's outer atmosphere called the corona, on a mission to help scientists learn more about Earth's closest star. The agency said the operations team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland received the signal, a beacon tone, from the probe just before midnight on Thursday. The spacecraft is expected to send detailed telemetry data about its status on Jan. 1, NASA added.
