Betsy Congdon Lead Engineer for Parker Solar Probe's heat shield. Curtis Wilkerson - Engineer
NASA's Parker Solar Probe is exploring the Sun.
Engineers show us the strength of the spacecraft's protective shield.
Betsy: Here we have a
piece of the heat shield for Parker Solar Probe
which is a sandwich panel, made of carbon
that is like the graphic epoxy you might find in your golf clubs or your tennis rackets
some carbon foam, and then another piece of carbon-carbon on the back.
It's very light weight, as you can see. And here I've got a blowtorch
and I'm gonna use it to get the front surface of this glowing hot.
And then we will have a nice demonstrator come in and touch the back with his hands.
Let's get this started.
30 seconds later
Betsy: You can start seeing it glowing red. The real heat shield gets up
to about 2500 degrees Fahrenheit which we're not going to do today.
But we are going to get it to a couple of hundred degrees Fahrenheit.
It's glowing pretty good now. Curtis, why don't you touch the back surface of that?
What does it feel like?
Curtis: Pretty cool
Betsy: "Nice and cool," he says. Which is just how we like it. Keeping the spacecraft cool.
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