NASA spacecraft ‘touches’ the Sun for the first time ever
From the article:<p><pre><code>  > A NASA spacecraft has entered a previously unexplored region of the Solar System — the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona. 

  > The mission’s closest approach is scheduled for 2025 at a distance of just 6.2 million kilometres from the solar surface, well within the orbit of Mercury.
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From the paper, it looks like the closest approach was<p><pre><code>  > 18.4 solar radii (R⊙ ≡ 6.95 × 10⁵ km) from the center of the Sun
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Wait, what? NASA says[1] the corona extends 5 million km, so 6.2 million km would be outside the corona. 18.4 × 6.95 × 10⁵ = 12.788 million km, which is more than twice the quoted number. And according to Wikipedia[2], Mercury's orbit is ~58 million km from the sun. So it's <i>already</i> well within that orbit. I've had a couple beers, but I didn't think I was that drunk already. What's going on?<p>[1] <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasas-stereo-maps-much-larger-solar-atmosphere-than-previously-observed/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasas-stereo-maps-much-...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(planet)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(planet)</a>