3029: Sun Avoidance

2026-04-06T14:23:21Z

128.118.12.20: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3029
| date = December 25, 2024
| title = Sun Avoidance
| image = sun_avoidance_2x.png
| imagesize = 311x403px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = C'mon, ESA Solar Orbiter team, just give the Parker probe a LITTLE nudge at aphelion. Crash it into the sun. Fulfill the dream of Icarus. It is your destiny.
}}

==Explanation==

The comic humorously ranks space missions based on their ability to "avoid" the Sun, presenting it as a "Sun Avoidance Skill Leaderboard." Most space missions remain relatively far from the Sun, with distances in the tens of millions of kilometers. However, the {{w|Parker Solar Probe}} is listed at the bottom of the leaderboard because it has come significantly closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft, at just 6.17 million kilometers. The joke lies in framing this incredible scientific achievement as a "failure" in avoiding the Sun.

The missions listed include notable solar and planetary exploration spacecraft like {{w|Mariner 10}}, {{w|Helios 1}}, {{w|BepiColombo}}, {{w|MESSENGER}}, and {{w|Solar Orbiter}}. These missions, designed to study the Sun or its surroundings, are ranked by their closest approaches to the Sun. The comic highlights the vast difference between the Parker Solar Probe and all other missions, emphasizing its unprecedented proximity to the Sun as part of its mission to study the solar corona and solar wind.

The inclusion of "All Other Expeditions in Human History" at the top of the leaderboard adds to the humor by lumping together all non-Sun-focused missions (likely including those which stayed on Earth for their entire duration), which obviously maintain much greater distances from the Sun. The comic concludes with a sarcastic congratulation to the Parker Solar Probe for its "worst job avoiding the Sun," humorously subverting the intention and achievement of the mission.

The caption text further expands on the joke by mockingly framing the Parker Solar Probe's proximity to the Sun as a skill-based failure. It suggests that its operators have demonstrated the "worst Sun avoidance skill" ever. This playful jab contrasts with the reality that the Parker Solar Probe's engineers and scientists intentionally designed the spacecraft to approach the Sun closer than ever before, enduring extreme heat and radiation to gather groundbreaking scientific data.

The "best job avoiding the Sun" award would likely go to the two Voyager probes, which started from Earth{{cn}}, traveled exclusively outwards from there, and successfully escaped the Sun's gravitational pull, sending them on a trajectory into deep space. Alternatively, depending on the definition of "expedition", and the method of calculating the award, it might go to a sub-expedition carried out on or near the moon during one of the Apollo moon landings, which could have had a higher minimum distance from the sun than any expedition which started from Earth. However, Randall does not mention who is at the top of the leaderboard, only lumping the leader in with all other expeditions.

The title text references the Greek legend of {{w|Icarus}}, whose father crafted artificial wings so the two of them could fly out of the open-topped prison they were in. Icarus, despite his father's warnings, flew too high which, according to the myth, got him appreciably closer to the Sun where it was much hotter, hot enough to destroy Icarus's wings, which caused him to plummet from a very high altitude to his death. The comic reframes this from an unfortunate consequence of his overreaching, to a glorious failure of an attempt to destroy himself by reaching the Sun itself. (As humanity has learned since then, the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere are cold, not hot, and the distance from Earth's surface to the upper reaches of its atmosphere is only a tiny fraction of the total distance from the Earth to the Sun.) The caption text urges the operators of the aforementioned Solar Orbiter to use their satellite to alter the Parker Solar Probe's orbit to send it into the Sun, which would by definition lower the Parker Solar Probe's distance from the Sun to zero. Unfortunately, the Parker Solar Probe was only designed to get close to the Sun, not into it, and would be destroyed soon after entering the Sun if not before. Being destroyed would prevent the Parker Solar Probe from transmitting any further data, terminating its mission. Its operators would probably object to this.{{cn}}

==Transcript==
:[Header:] Sun Avoidance Skill Leaderboard

:[A table with three columns, all with underlined headers.]
:Rank
:Mission
:Sun Nearest Miss
:[First 'row', 'Rank', is of extra height and over several lines, using vertical and horizontal ellipses between the two endpoints to indicate a range of ranks in the first column, the first visible digit of the larger number being cut off by the left frame edge:] 1. ⋮ … ⋮ 4303857.
:[Across both the 'Mission' and 'Sun Nearest Miss' columns, the first row has some text spread across two lines, within a framing pair of large square brackets to match the Rank range:] All other expeditions in human history
:[A simple row, with all three columns separately populated, the first column's Rank number is also cut off across the first visible digit.]
:4303858.
:Mariner-10
:69.0 million km
:[Another row, likewise.]
:4303859.
:Helios 1
:46.4 million km
:[Another row.]
:4303860.
:BepiColombo
:45.8 million km
:[Another row, with a yet more significant Ranking digit now partly visible due to non-proportional spacing, itself being cut off in the stead of the now fully visible next digit.]
:24303861.
:Messenger
:45.3 million km
:[Another row, back to the original pre-cutoff.]
:4303862.
:Solar Orbiter
:43.8 million km
:[Another row.]
:4303863.
:Helios 2
:43.3 million km
:[Final row.]
:4303864.
:Parker
:6.17 million km

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Congratulations to the Parker Solar Probe for setting a new record for "Worst Job Avoiding the Sun."

==Trivia==
*This comic was released on Christmas Day of 2024, but makes no reference to Christmas.
**This year marks the first time in xkcd's 20 year history (of releasing comics around Christmas), that there have been no [[:Category:Christmas|Christmas comics]] released during those days.
**Also all nine times before this year, when a release day fell on Christmas Day, that comic has always been about Christmas.
**If [[Randall]] found the accomplishments of the Parker Solar Probe more interesting than Christmas itself that might explain why this comic was released on Christmas Day instead.
**It is not the first space exploration accomplishment mentioned during Christmas, however, in the previous case ([[2559: December 25th Launch]]) from 2021, the comic was given a seasonal spin. 
**The lack of Christmas comics continued in 2025 making it two years in a row, see this [[3186:_Truly_Universal_Outlet#Trivia|trivia]] from [[3186: Truly Universal Outlet]], released on Boxing Day of 2025.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Space probes]]

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3029: Sun Avoidance