NASA has announced that they have received the first data dump from their solar probe they launched back in August 12th, 2018.
Since the Parker Solar Probe is designed to observe the sun and is currently caught in its immense gravitational pull, the probe can only send back data chunks at certain times. NASA has just received their first data dump from the probe and it's 50% bigger than what they expected. 20GB of data was downloaded from the first and second pass of the probe going around the sun.
Nickalaus Pinkine, Parker Solar Probe mission operations manager said "All of the expected science data collected through the first and second encounters is now on the ground. As we learned more about operating in this environment and these orbits, the team did a great job of increasing data downloads of the information gathered by the spacecraft's amazing instruments."
While this might seem like quite and achievement, the probes work is hardly finished. The Parker Solar Probe is only 1 year in on its seven year lifespan going around the sun, over this period of time scientists hope to learn new information about how our sun works and if that information will be relevant to other active stars in our observable universe.
