
Europe’s solar orbiter begins its journey to the Sun tonight - rbanffy
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02/europes-solar-orbiter-begins-its-journey-to-the-sun/
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ptha
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/](http://www.enbio.eu/thermal-control/)

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

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

or...

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

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arethuza
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.

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

That's very impressive.

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arethuza
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](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51420402)

Edit: Avoid the HYS comments....

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Jaruzel
> _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.

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miohtama
> 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.

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

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

