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Parker Solar Probe Gets Its Revolutionary Heat Shield

The headshot image of Susannah Darling

Susannah Darling

Sep 26, 2017
Article

On Sept. 25, 2017, media were invited to see NASA’s Parker Solar Probe in its flight configuration at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, where it is being built. The revolutionary heat shield that will protect the first spacecraft to fly directly into the Sun’s atmosphere was installed for the first time on Sept. 21. This is the only time the spacecraft will have its thermal protection system — made of a 4.5-inch-thick carbon composite that will reach temperatures of 2,500 F while at the Sun — attached until just before launch.

In this time-lapse video taken on Sept. 21, 2017, the thermal protection system – the heat shield — for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe spacecraft is shown during installation at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. This 4.5-inch thick, eight-foot diameter shield protects the spacecraft and its instruments against the intense heat and energy of the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, through which the spacecraft will fly on a mission of extreme exploration.
Credits: NASA

Parker Solar Probe is scheduled for launch on July 31, 2018, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The spacecraft will explore the Sun’s outer atmosphere and make critical observations that will answer decades-old questions about the physics of how stars work. The resulting data will improve forecasts of major space weather events that impact life on Earth, as well as satellites and astronauts in space.

Karen Fox

NASA’s Goddard Space flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.