Can a robot be created to withstand the heat of the sun?
There is a spacecraft called Solar Probe that is being designed to get close to the Sun, about 4 times the radius of the Sun. But there is no known material that can actually get down to the surface of the Sun without melting. Even Solar Probe has what’s called an “ablative” shield, a material that will start to melt, but won’t melt through in the short time that the spacecraft is close to the Sun. Solar Probe is due to launch in 2008 or so. Eric Christian SCIENTIST: Eric Christian, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center QUESTION: How can you tell which bit of data is coming from which satellite? Don’t they all get mixed up in outer space with so many satellites and things sending back data to our Earth? CAMS2, Grade 6, Deer Park Middle Magnet ANSWER: Excellent question! We know because data is sent back in packets which have unique identifiers. What does that mean? Well, the bytes (information) are sent back a little bit at a time. At the front of every packet, there are identifying numbers
