NASA's OSIRIS-APEX spacecraft successfully completed its closest ever pass of the Sun on January 2, 2024, and emerged unscathed [0836051a]. The spacecraft's components remained safe despite traveling 25 million miles closer to the Sun than originally designed. Engineers placed OSIRIS-APEX in a fixed orientation and repositioned one of its solar arrays to shade the sensitive components during the pass. The spacecraft's instruments, including a camera and a spectrometer, performed better than expected after exposure to higher temperatures [0836051a].
OSIRIS-APEX is now on its way to rendezvous with asteroid Apophis in 2029, but it still needs to complete five more close passes of the Sun and three Earth gravity assists. The second perihelion is scheduled for September 1, 2024 [0836051a].