In a historic milestone for space exploration, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has delivered the closest-ever images of the Sun — a blistering 3.8 million miles from its roiling surface. The new images showcase turbulent solar winds and merging eruptions with unprecedented clarity.

Eruptions of plasma piling atop one another, solar wind streaming out in exquisite detail -- the closest-ever images of our Sun are a gold mine for scientists.

Sunspot 3912 erupted with an X2-class solar flare.NOAA's GOES-R satellite captures footage of the blast in multiple wavelengths. Credit: Space.com | footage courtesy: NOAA | edited by Steve Spaleta

The burgeoning space industry and the technologies society increasingly relies on—electric grids, aviation and telecommunications—are all vulnerable to the same threat: space weather.