NASA plans to send its first robotic spacecraft to the Sun next year, to probe its atmosphere. Eric Christian, a NASA research scientist at Goddard Space Flight Centre said in Washington that NASA’s Solar Probe Plus mission to the Sun, which is about 149 million kilometres from the Earth, will unveil why the surface of the Sun is not as hot as its atmosphere, how solar wind gets its speed and why the Sun occasionally emits high energy particles that are a danger to unprotected astronauts and spacecraft.
He said NASA has designed a 11.4 centimetres carbon-composite shield, which is designed to withstand temperatures outside the spacecraft of 1,370 degrees Celsius. Christian said, the unmanned probe will have special heat tubes called thermal radiators that will radiate heat that permeates the heat shield to open space.