They Should Have Called It "Sundiver"

Tuckerfan · Aug 8, 2026

It travels a mere 430K miles per hour.

This Is The Fastest Object Ever Built By Man

On June 8, it matched its own speed record again. It also pushed itself right to the edge of where humankind can even reach, again. While doing all that, this fearless daredevil was also carefully taking detailed scientific measurements. Guts and brains both, this one. It is the single fastest object ever built by man: NASA's Parker Solar Probe, designed and operated by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). First launched in August 2018, it has been slowly, carefully orbiting closer and closer to the Sun. As NASA explains, during close approaches to the blazing star, Parker slingshots by its gargantuan gravity and reaches a speed of 430,000 miles per hour. That's about 120 miles per second.

Parker's day job is to study the Sun's atmosphere, a dynamic and active area of solar winds and solar flares. It does that by getting closer to it than anything else ever made, even closer than the planet Mercury. In fact, Parker is the first vehicle ever to fly through the solar corona. According to NASA, on closest approach, Parker is a mere 3.8 million miles from the solar surface. At that distance, temperatures reach 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit. This actually varies a little bit, since the Sun goes through 11-year cycles. It last peaked in 2024, when Parker first achieved its speed and distance milestones. Parker wants to better understand how this cycle operates, while simultaneously driving through space like a maniac — a role model to us all.

So where does this bold explorer, this champion of humanity's imagination and capability, go next? You'll be pleased to learn that nobody knows. The whole Parker mission is currently under review at NASA, an agency struggling to preserve its activities amid staffing shortages, with experienced employees taking buyouts and threatened budget cuts. Parker can withstand the heat of the Sun, but whether it can withstand the Trump administration remains to be seen.

For what it's worth, another NASA probe has a claim to make for the title of "Fastest Object," too. Though New Horizons currently travels at a measly 34,000 mph, it reached 36,400 mph during its launch in 2006. As NASA explains, this is the fastest speed ever achieved through self-propulsion, rather than gravity-assisted trickery. New Horizons studied Pluto, taking the most detailed pictures of the dwarf planet ever taken. It would later go on to study Arrokoth, a small object in the Kuiper Belt; this remains the most distant object ever explored.
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ed629 · Aug 8, 2026

Tuckerfan said: ↑

It travels a mere 430K miles per hour.

This Is The Fastest Object Ever Built By Man

On June 8, it matched its own speed record again. It also pushed itself right to the edge of where humankind can even reach, again. While doing all that, this fearless daredevil was also carefully taking detailed scientific measurements. Guts and brains both, this one. It is the single fastest object ever built by man: NASA's Parker Solar Probe, designed and operated by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). First launched in August 2018, it has been slowly, carefully orbiting closer and closer to the Sun. As NASA explains, during close approaches to the blazing star, Parker slingshots by its gargantuan gravity and reaches a speed of 430,000 miles per hour. That's about 120 miles per second.

Parker's day job is to study the Sun's atmosphere, a dynamic and active area of solar winds and solar flares. It does that by getting closer to it than anything else ever made, even closer than the planet Mercury. In fact, Parker is the first vehicle ever to fly through the solar corona. According to NASA, on closest approach, Parker is a mere 3.8 million miles from the solar surface. At that distance, temperatures reach 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit. This actually varies a little bit, since the Sun goes through 11-year cycles. It last peaked in 2024, when Parker first achieved its speed and distance milestones. Parker wants to better understand how this cycle operates, while simultaneously driving through space like a maniac — a role model to us all.

So where does this bold explorer, this champion of humanity's imagination and capability, go next? You'll be pleased to learn that nobody knows. The whole Parker mission is currently under review at NASA, an agency struggling to preserve its activities amid staffing shortages, with experienced employees taking buyouts and threatened budget cuts. Parker can withstand the heat of the Sun, but whether it can withstand the Trump administration remains to be seen.

For what it's worth, another NASA probe has a claim to make for the title of "Fastest Object," too. Though New Horizons currently travels at a measly 34,000 mph, it reached 36,400 mph during its launch in 2006. As NASA explains, this is the fastest speed ever achieved through self-propulsion, rather than gravity-assisted trickery. New Horizons studied Pluto, taking the most detailed pictures of the dwarf planet ever taken. It would later go on to study Arrokoth, a small object in the Kuiper Belt; this remains the most distant object ever explored.
Click to expand...

Click to expand...

At that speed, it's still only going 0.06% the speed of light.

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They Should Have Called It "Sundiver"

Tuckerfan BMF

ed629 Morally Inept Banned