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For the mission that will bring a spacecraft closer to the sun, NASA has equipped the Parker Solar Probe with a revolutionary heat shield technology.
The historic spacecraft was equipped with the thermal protection system 27 June, NASA announced Thursday. The agency also invited the media to see the entire spacecraft on July 13 at the Astrotech Space Operations in Titusville, Florida
NASA's Parker Solar Probe should not be launched before August 4 from the Cape Canaveral Air Station in Florida.
The Heat Shield
The TPS is an 8-foot-diameter heat shield designed to protect the spaceship in its shadow or the shadow that it projects onto the spacecraft. When the Parker solar probe reaches its closest approach to the sun, temperatures can reach nearly 2500 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat shield will absorb most of the heat, letting in only 85 degrees Fahrenheit of heat into the spacecraft.
The GST is built like a sandwich. A carbon foam core, measuring 4.5 inches, is pressed between two panels of carbon-carbon composite materials overheated. The side facing the sun is sprayed with a white coating specially formulated to repel the solar energy from the TPS.
The heat shield weighs only about 160 pounds. It should be designed as light as possible because when the Parker solar sensor reaches its closest approach to the sun, it moves as fast as 430,000 km / h. It will be like traveling from Philadelphia to Washington, DC, in about a second.
The installation done on June 27 was in fact the second time that NASA had installed TPS on the spacecraft. The agency initially set up TPS in 2017 during tests at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Maryland.
The current installation, on the other hand, is the complete final integration of TPS on the Parker solar probe. 19659004] Parker Solar Probe
The Parker Solar Probe approaches seven times more than the sun's atmosphere, known as the crown. This is something that has not been done by any spacecraft in the past. It will provide the experts with the closest observations of a star.
The spacecraft will use the gravity of Venus to fly seven overflights during its nearly seven-year mission. It will fly through the sun's atmosphere as close as 3.8 million miles, entering a good orbit within Mercury. The average distance from the Earth to the sun is 93 million miles.
In the end, the Parker Solar Probe will help experts know the origin and the evolution of the solar wind. It will provide information that will help experts predict changes in the Earth's space environment that impact life and technology on Earth.
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