The Thermal Protection System is lifted and realigned with the spacecraft’s truss as engineers from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab prepare to install the 8-foot-diameter heat shield on June 27, 2018. Source: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Ed WhitmanThe Thermal Protection System is lifted and realigned with the spacecraft’s truss as engineers from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab prepare to install the 8-foot-diameter heat shield on June 27, 2018. Source: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Ed Whitman

NASA plans to launch its Parker Solar Probe in August 2018 on a mission to the sun’s corona. Bringing the probe within four million miles of the sun’s surface — closer than any anthropogenic object has traveled — will require intensive preparations for thermal protection. Agency engineers have installed an 8-foot-diameter heat shield for this purpose.

The 160-pound Thermal Protection System (TPS) is composed of two superheated carbon-carbon composite panels encasing a 4.5-inch-thick carbon foam core. A white coating designed to reflect the sun’s energy away from the probe covers the sun-facing side of the shield.

The thermal load on the TPS will approach 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit at the craft’s closest approach, but the probe and its instruments will be maintained at a temperature of about 85 degrees Fahrenheit.

The primary science goals for the mission are to trace how energy and heat move through the solar corona and to explore what accelerates the solar wind as well as solar energetic particles. Parker Solar Probe is part of NASA’s Living with a Star Program to explore aspects of the sun-Earth system that directly affect life and society.

To contact the author of this article, email shimmelstein@globalspec.com