The probe took images of the most powerful CME, an eruption of super-hot gas, or plasma, from the sun’s surface.

“It’s giving @NASASun scientists a better look at space weather and its potential effects on Earth,” the agency stated in a post on X.

CME can have significant consequences on Earth, including endangering satellites, disrupting communication and navigation technologies, and even knocking out power grids. In 1989, a potent CME caused a massive blackout in Québec, Canada.

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Parker’s journey through the CME is helping to prove a 20-year-old theory about the interaction of CMEs with interplanetary dust, with implications for space weather predictions, NASA said.

“CMEs may interact with interplanetary dust in orbit around our star and even carry the dust outward. CMEs are immense eruptions from the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, that help drive space weather, which can endanger satellites, disrupt communications and navigation technologies, and even knock out power grids on Earth,” it added.

The dust is made up of tiny particles from asteroids, comets, and even planets, and is present throughout the solar system. A type of faint glow called zodiacal light, sometimes visible before sunrise or after sunset, is one manifestation of the cloud of interplanetary dust.