![]() Resulting in a highly durable carbon/ceramic coating shown to be exceptionally stable under temperature cycling and UV, this pigment also allowed for application of a white silicate layer as an overcoat to provide the stable interface required by the dense ceramic coating to compensate for the difference in thermal expansion between the hot inward facing aluminium side of the craft’s panels and the cold white-coated side facing the vacuum of space. The craft therefore had to be coated in a specifically developed pigment (SolarWhite) created from bone. For the Solar Orbiter, things were, however, not quite as “black and white” and subsequently had to be mixed a little.Įxtreme temperatures and UV radiation can cause white coatings to gradually change colour, which would affect the Orbiter’s ability to remain cool. This orbit means the Solar Orbiter will encounter sunlight that is far more powerful (13 times more, to be precise) than that encountered by Earth on its current orbit – which in turn means it’s going to be extremely HOT!įor spacecrafts, the predominant thought is “white”, and for the Sun, said thought is to “avoid black”. While the Orbiter will not get as close as NASA’s Parker Probe to the Sun, it will remain within a Sun-facing orbit throughout its entire life of measuring and imaging the solar environment via instrument ports situated at its heat shield’s front. The Challenges Faced by the ESA NASA Solar Orbiter Led by the European Space Agency (ESA) in close cooperation with NASA, the Solar Orbiter ‘s mission is to explore and observe the Sun, its electrical and magnetic fields, solar winds and how they affect earth, as well as collecting data on its atmosphere, outflow of materials and more, as well as offering unprecedented views and delivering the first images of the sun and its polar regions ever – which will hopefully provide scientists with greater insights into what is currently an area of which we have only little understanding. ![]()
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