Europe’s solar orbiter begins its journey to the Sun tonight | Hacker News Reader

Europe’s solar orbiter begins its journey to the Sun tonight

arstechnica.com

55 pointsrbanffy13 comments

The protection on the front of the orbiter is quite a combination of old/new tech.

Solar Orbiter’s radiation-hardened instruments will be protected from the sweltering heat by a shield covered with doors that periodically open to allow the spacecraft’s instruments to image the sun. About half the size of an average parking space, the Solar Orbiter’s heat shield is a mix of modern and ancient technology. Its outermost layer is a strip of titanium just a fraction of a millimeter thick and coated on the sun-facing side with charred animal bone. This is the same stuff used by prehistoric humans to paint cave walls, but its properties also make it great for radiating heat away from a spacecraft.

The process for coating the Titanium heat shield with the black charred animal bone is developed by an Irish company, called Enbio: http://www.enbio.eu/thermal-control/

Going to the Sun at night looks a bit counter-intuitive. I hope the scientists have everything covered. Godspeed.

They'll reach it after sunrise, duh ;-)

or...

This way it doesn't get too hot and the probe can have less thermal isolation.

On BBC Radio 4 this morning a scientist (presumably from the ESA team) mentioned that the thermal protection is so effective that some of the instruments have heaters to keep them warm enough.

> the thermal protection is so effective that some of the instruments have heaters to keep them warm enough

That's very impressive.

It would be much easier to image it when it settles down in Flagstaff, AZ every night.

Well they were already +1 by choosing to go in Winter, when it's colder.

There is an old Soviet-Russian anecdote:

Brezhnev invites a group of cosmonauts. - Comrades! The Americans have landed on the Moon. We have conferred and decided that you would fly to the Sun! - But we'd burn down there, Leonid Il'ich! - Don't worry! The Party has thought it all through. You will fly at night!

Perhaps worth noting that this article is a day old and it was launched last night:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51420402

Edit: Avoid the HYS comments....

> Edit: Avoid the HYS comments....

For good mental health, I thoroughly recommend a uBlock cosmetic filter to hide the complete HYS DIV block which works on ALL BBC pages. For added benefit, also do the same on all news sites that have comment sections. Excluding HN, of course.

> Its outermost layer is a strip of titanium just a fraction of a millimeter thick and coated on the sun-facing side with charred animal bone. This is the same stuff used by prehistoric humans to paint cave walls, but its properties also make it great for radiating heat away from a spacecraft.

Is this true? Sounds very sensational press.

Well they could've said Calcium, but that sounds mundane

"Europe’s solar orbiter begins its journey to the Sun tonight". Has the title changed just to make the joke? I like it. :)

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