NASA solar probe becomes fastest object ever built as it 'touches the sun’

https://blogs.nasa.gov/parkersolarprobe/ has good information and a graphic illustrating the orbits of the probe.

BTW, "touches the sun" means 6.5 million miles away. To try to put that in perspective:

"One astronomical unit (AU) represents the mean distance between the Earth and our sun. An AU is approximately 93 million miles (150 million km). It's approximately 8 light-minutes." [0]

The probe at its closest orbit will be orbiting at very approximately 1/14 of an AU. And (again very approximately) 34 light-seconds from the Sun.

0 - https://earthsky.org/space/what-is-the-astronomical-unit

I can't stand it when popular articles quote spacecraft speeds in mph or km/h. It's supposed to be more relatable to laypeople, obviously, but it's not.

What does hundreds of thousands of mph mean to me? Nothing; there's nothing in ordinary life to compare to. Miles (or km) per second, now that does create a picture. I also can vaguely recall the order of magnitude of earth orbital speed in mi/s, as well as the speed of light.

Question: when they list these speeds, what is is relative to? The earth? The surface of the sun? I would be interested to hear from anyone who knows.

Slow down Parker! I cant see squat in those Venus pics you are taking.

It hit 532,000 km/h at its fastest speed, or ~0.05% the speed of light.

1% of the speed of light would be 10.8 million km/hr