Empirical Earth · The Sky — Sun, Moon & Stars

We’ve flown a probe almost into the Sun — and the math only works at 150 million km

The claim

“The Sun is small and close, not 150 million km away.”

What is measured

The Parker Solar Probe orbits the Sun, passing 6.1 million km from its surface at 191 km/s, navigated by radio. Its speed, trajectory and the light it measures only fit a Sun ~150 million km away with its true mass, not a local Sun a few thousand km overhead.

What would show this is wrong

a spacecraft trajectory, tracked by radio ranging, that is solved consistently with the Sun only a few thousand kilometers above a flat Earth.

Sources

  1. Parker Solar Probe: distance & speed. Launched 2018; after seven Venus flybys it passed 6.1 million km (3.8 million mi) from the Sun’s surface (~0.04 AU) on 24 Dec 2024 at 430,000 mph (191 k link
  2. Parker Solar Probe’s record close approach (Dec 2024). On 24 December 2024 Parker passed 6.1 million km (3.8 million miles) from the Sun’s surface at 692,000 km/h (191 km/s) — the closest an link
  3. Earlier and parallel Sun-orbiting craft. Helios 2 (German-American) set the prior solar record in 1976 at 42.7 million km and ~68 km/s; ESA’s Solar Orbiter now observes from ~45 million km, link
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