During three of its first five orbits around the Sun, Parker Solar Probe (PSP) crossed the large-scale Heliospheric Current Sheet (HCS)
multiple times and provided unprecedented detailed plasma and field observations of the near-Sun HCS. We report the common
detections by PSP of reconnection exhaust signatures in the HCS at heliocentric distances of 29.5-107 solar radii during Encounters
1, 4 and 5. Both sunward and antisunward-directed reconnection exhausts were observed. In the sunward reconnection exhausts,
PSP detected counterstreaming strahl electrons, indicating that HCS reconnection resulted in the formation of closed magnetic field
lines with both ends connected to the Sun. In the antisunward exhausts, PSP observed dropouts of strahl electrons, consistent with
the reconnected HCS field lines being disconnected from the Sun. The common detection of reconnection in the HCS suggests that
reconnection is almost always active in the HCS near the Sun. Furthermore, the occurrence of multiple long-duration partial crossings
of the HCS suggests that HCS reconnection could produce chains of large bulges with spatial dimensions of up to several solar
radii. The finding of the prevalence of reconnection in the HCS is somewhat surprising since PSP has revealed that the HCS is much
thicker than the kinetic scales required for reconnection onset. The observations are also in stark contrast with the apparent absence
of reconnection in most of the small-scale and much more intense current sheets encountered near perihelia, many of which are
associated with ‘switchbacks’. Thus, the PSP findings suggest that large-scale dynamics either locally in the solar wind or within the
coronal source of the HCS (at the tip of helmet streamers) plays a critical role in triggering reconnection onset.