(CNN) Although the sun sits at the center of our solar system, mystery has surrounded the star and its behavior. In August 2018, NASA launched the Parker Solar Probe to draw closer to the sun than any satellite before. Now, the first data from the probe's initial close passes of the sun have revealed some of the star's strange activity.

The probe was designed to help answer fundamental questions about the solar wind that streams out from the sun, flinging energetic particles across the solar system. Its instruments may also provide insight about why the sun's corona, the outer atmosphere of the star, is so much hotter than the actual surface. The corona is one million degrees Kelvin, while the surface is around 6,000 Kelvin.

Understanding the solar wind and the blazing heat of the corona are key. They both play a role in space weather and solar storms, and understanding the solar wind could enable better prediction of space weather. Solar wind and the corona's temperature also impact ejections of mass from the corona, which could impact the global power grid and telecommunications on Earth, as well as our astronauts on the International Space Station. The energized and accelerated particles streaming away from the sun in the solar wind are also responsible for the northern and southern lights we see on Earth.

"There was a major space weather event in 1859 that blew out telegraph networks on Earth and one in 1972 that set off naval mines in North Vietnam," said Stuart Bale, one of the study authors and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. "We're much more of a technological society than we were in 1972 -- the communications networks and the power grid on Earth are extraordinarily complex, so big disturbances from the sun are potentially a very serious thing. If we could predict space weather, we could shut down or isolate parts of the power grid, or shut down satellite systems that might be vulnerable."

line of the sun's magnetic field and out into space. Four studies revealing the first science results from the probe's 14,912,908-mile flyby of the sun published Wednesday in the journal During its first close encounter with the sun, the Parker Solar Probe essentially kept itself suspended over a hole in the corona for a week, watching solar wind particles streaming along theline of the sun's magnetic field and out into space. Four studies revealing the first science results from the probe's 14,912,908-mile flyby of the sun published Wednesday in the journal Nature

NASA's Parker Solar Probe observed a slow solar wind flowing out from the small coronal hole -- a long, thin black spot seen on the left side of the sun.

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