Space agency NASA, in conjunction with Johns Hopkins University, is to send a spacecraft eight times closer to the Sun than any previous craft.
Image: Artist\'s concept of NASA\'s Solar Probe spacecraft. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University (Applied Physics Laboratory)
The $750 million Solar Probe will fly into the Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, and study the birth of the solar wind amongst other tasks.
Scientists for many years have attempted to come up with ideas to overcome the problem of protecting such a craft from such scorching temperatures. It is only recently however that researchers have been able to develop an adequate heat shield -- a disc-shaped, carbon-composite structure around 2.7 metres in diameter and about 15 centimetres thick.
Facing 1400 °Celsius (2600 °F) temperatures, the heat shield will allow instruments behind the shield to operate at room temperature said Solar Probe project manager Andrew Dantzler to New Scientist magazine.
"It's not your run-of-the-mill spacecraft," he said. "The whole spacecraft is optimally designed to dissipate heat."
Studying the Sun at such a close range promises to beam back "unprecedented" data say the Solar Probe research team.
"Solar Probe is going to be our first visit to our mother star," said Manolis Georgoulis, the mission's deputy project scientist at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) to the New Scientist. APL has been given the task by NASA of building the probe which is expected to be launched in 2015.
"The quality of the data that we hope to gather at such a close distance to the Sun is unprecedented," he added.
The probe is expected to have a life span of seven years.
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