Great model of the Helios spacecraft. The base commemorates this joint US-German project from the 1970s. As you might guess, the two probes in this project studied the sun. They set records for spacecraft getting close to the sun that weren’t broken until the Parker Solar Probe was launched in 2018. Since orbit speed is related to closeness to the sun, Helios also set a spacecraft speed record, reaching about 160,000 mph. As the Parker Probe slowly gets closer to the sun, it will beat that by a factor of 3.
Photo by Grasons.