NASA's Parker Solar Probe captures stunning Venus photo during close flyby - Space.com

NASA's Parker Solar Probe nailed its fourth swing past Venus on Feb.

Parker Solar Probe launched in August 2018 with a daring mission: to fly closer to the sun than any previous spacecraft.

But along the way, the probe needs to whiz past Venus a total of seven times, with each pass pulling the spacecraft closer to the sun.

And while Parker Solar Probe is tailored to studying the sun, if a spacecraft has to loop past our "evil twin" planet anyway, might as well turn the instruments on, the team figured.

On July 11, 2020, the spacecraft was conducting its third Venus flyby, zooming 7,693 miles (12,380 kilometers) away from the planet, according to a NASA statement.

During the maneuver, the team switched on the spacecraft's Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe (WISPR) instrument to take a peek at Venus — with stunning results.

WISPR is designed to capture distant, visible-light images of phenomena surrounding the sun, like the solar wind that constantly shoots charged particles out from the sun across the solar system or the coronal mass ejections that vomit blobs of matter into space, according to NASA.

But the real highlight is Venus itself, which looks nothing like what scientists expected to see with WISPR.

To determine which scenario is at play, WISPR took similar photographs during Parker Solar Probe's fourth Venus flyby, which took place on Feb.

The spacecraft's next milestone will be a close approach to the sun on April 29; its next Venus flyby is scheduled for Oct.