NASA's Parker Solar Probe is solving long-standing mysteries about the sun. Here's what we've learned so far.

A silver and gold trumpet like spacecraft directed at the edge of a glowing orange sphere.

On Nov. 6, NASA's Parker Solar Probe passed within 234 miles (376 kilometers) of Venus' surface. The purpose of this close flyby was to accomplish a gravity-assist maneuver, in which the probe would steal some of Venus' momentum to change the spacecraft's orbit and bring itself even closer to the sun.

The Parker Solar Probe had already made several close passes of the sun, but the recent flyby was its closest, coming within about 3.8 million miles (6 million km) of the solar surface. That's less than nine times the radius of the sun.