NASA’s Parker Solar Probe on Tuesday became the first spacecraft to "touch the sun".

According to a report on CNN, the Parker Solar Probe has successfully flown through the sun's corona, or upper atmosphere, to sample particles and our star's magnetic fields.

"Parker Solar Probe 'touching the Sun' is a monumental moment for solar science and a truly remarkable feat," said Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, in a statement.

"Not only does this milestone provide us with deeper insights into our Sun's evolution and (its) impacts on our solar system, but everything we learn about our own star also teaches us more about stars in the rest of the universe," he added.

The announcement was made at the 2021 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in New Orleans, and research from the solar milestone has been published in the Physical Review Letters.

The Parker Solar Probe launched in 2018 and set out to circle closer and closer to the sun. Scientists, including the spacecraft's namesake astrophysicist Eugene Parker, want to answer fundamental questions about the solar wind that streams out from the sun, flinging energetic particles across the solar system.

The sun's corona is much hotter than the actual surface of the star, and the spacecraft could provide insight about why. The corona is one million degrees Kelvin (1,800,000 degrees Fahrenheit) at its hottest point, while the surface is around 6,000 Kelvin (10,340 degrees Fahrenheit).

The spacecraft has already revealed surprising finds about the sun, including the 2019 discovery of magnetic zig-zag structures in the solar wind called switchbacks.

In April, the Parker team realized their spacecraft had crossed the boundary and entered the solar atmosphere for the first time.

Parker wove in and out of the corona several times over the course of a few hours during the April flyby, which helped researchers understand that the boundary, called the Alfvén critical surface, isn't a smooth circle around the sun. Instead, it has spikes and valleys. Understanding the presence of these features could allow scientists to match them with solar activity from the sun's surface.