Quizzes & Puzzles0 min ago
Astro-physics
How close to the sun could a spacecraft get before it combusted or vapourized?
Answers
Best Answer
No best answer has yet been selected by joboy. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.Rather depends on the spacecraft.
Nasa have a probe planned to approach 3 RS (solar radius about 700,000Km) so about 2.1 Million KM
http://solarprobe.gsfc.nasa.gov/solarprobe_mis sion.htm
67 RS is the previous best
Nasa have a probe planned to approach 3 RS (solar radius about 700,000Km) so about 2.1 Million KM
http://solarprobe.gsfc.nasa.gov/solarprobe_mis sion.htm
67 RS is the previous best
That does seem awfully close, say a thirtieth of our distance. That means the stuff falling on it will be about a thousand times stronger than that falling on us. Imagine the warmth you feel on your face on a sunny day upped by a thousand! And we have the protection of an atmosphere and a magnetic field. It must be made of something good.
Or perhaps they'll send it at night.
Or perhaps they'll send it at night.
You have a couple of options - heavy reflective shielding on the sunward side of the spacecraft and the majority of your instrumentation on the "dark" side with shuttered ports for cameras etc and/or 'barbecue' or 'rotisserie' mode where you give the craft a permanent spin so that the same area doesn't face the sun for long periods of time. Apollo used the latter method when in transit to and from the moon.
Maty - I think your maths may be a little out - 2.1 million Km is around 1.3 million miles (I'm old, I can do both, but I'm so much happier in Imperial!) Earth to Sun is about 93 million miles so about a 70th of our distance. This gives approx 5000 times the incident heat/ light we currently experience. Plus there's probably various types of particle thrown off by the sun which aren'tenergetic enough to reach all the way out to here but are more than capable of reaching the spacecraft.