Slowing down enough on the way in makes a mission to Mercury, Venus or in this case the Sun itself harder than going out, say to Mars. It had better be.įrom launch – by an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral in October 2018 – Solar Orbiter will take three years to reach is orbit around the Sun. Harris says the pointing system is not unusual, but it is designed to be supremely robust and accurate. So, with periods of up to a month with no Earth contact, this spacecraft will have to be able to auto-control like nothing before it. According to Tim Harris, deputy project manager for prime contractor Airbus Defence & Space, if Solar Obiter diverges more than 8° from straight-on the Sun’s blast will fry the mission. Meanwhile, any space mission has to stay pointed at its target – the stars, the Earth, Mars, whatever – but for Solar Orbiter, pointing is mission-critical. And, to get that data back to Earth, the spacecraft’s high-gain antenna will have, sometimes, to poke its head out from behind the shield. Unfortunately, to take those measurements will mean opening hatches in Solar Orbiter’s heat shield, to let some of that flux inside, to pass its instruments before being carefully vented out the sides of the spacecraft. That close, and Solar Orbiter’s instruments will be able to observe our star with unprecedented detail while taking measurements of the flood of highly charged particles passing by – measurements which can be compared with those taken by solar observatories in the relatively benign environment of Earth orbit, another 110 million km distant. Now, go a bit closer until the Sun is just 42 million km away, and the temperature on the Sun side of Solar Orbiter’s heat shield will be 600☌. To get a sense of the challenge in designing the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter mission, consider that the surface temperature on the planet Mercury gets up to 427☌ – nearly twice the melting point of tin. Airline Business special: CEOs to watch in 2021.FlightGlobal Guide to Business Aviation Training and Safety 2021.EDGE: A new global force in aerospace and defence.Shell Aviation: What will it take to Decarbonise Aviation?.What does the future of aviation look like in 2022?. Guide to Business Aviation Training and Safety 2022.What will it take to Decarbonise Aviation?.Airline Business Covid-19 recovery tracker.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |