Forget the Oscars, the Solar Orbiter is off to take a close look at our nearest (and super-hot) star The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter launched on time at 04:03 UTC this morning on the back of an Atlas V. The rocket, in 411 configuration (a 4m payload fairing and single solid rocket booster stuck to the side of the main vehicle), sent the spacecraft on its way, marking the 82nd launch of an Atlas V. The Atlas V has …
The boffins can obviously take some credit for that, of course, but some credit is due to the engineers and technicians who built the things in a such a sturdy way.
Who knows ? Maybe it's just the fact that building things to survive long exposure to space radiation also makes them inherently more durable than the specifications call for. In any case, I do believe that there is no case of an orbiter, satellite or probe that failed before planned mission end as long as it was put on the right orbit / landed safely.
Long may we continue that tradition.
The boffins can obviously take some credit for that, of course, but some credit is due to the engineers and technicians who built the things in a such a sturdy way.
Pretty sure that 'boffin' and 'engineer' are not mutually exclusive terms: engineers can be boffins, and many are, especially the ones that design and build spacecraft. Indeed the kind of boffin who regards engineers as a lesser breed (which happens) is, I suspect, often suffering from secret envy in the usual way.
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I can't remember the specifics for Solo; it was a long time ago, but I think the radiation total dose was similar to about 20 years in geostationary orbit. Then it had to work perfectly at 20°C higher than the expected highest temperature. And all of this with a reliability of something like 99.999. I had to meet the whole specification for that, but the mission could probably work with worse performance
It doesn't surprise me when it lasts longer than the initial mission life.
harsh environment near the Sun
I'm not sure in what sense 28 million miles counts as "near". Certainly that's nearer even than Mercury, but artists impressions showing the orbiter next to an impressively large Sun are totally misleading. The Sun would look about four times as large as the Moon does from Earth. That's spanning, ooh, two degrees on the sky.
The Reg can be forgiven for being no worse than ESA and other news outlets for this. I'm sure that journos worldwide still think of the Solar System as a very crowded place where the distances are easily spanned by simple rockets. "Taxi! Phobos and don't hang around!"
Being 0.3 AU away from the Sun will mean that it's exposed to roughly ten times more solar radiation than if it were at Earth-distance though. I'm sure I've read before that heat-management is important in satellites, as they have to get rid of heat by radiation, which only removes a small amount of energy. Consequently, it's quite easy for electronics to overheat.
More importantly, it will also be exposed to ten times more charged particles and other nasties. And won't be shielded by the Earth's magnetic field. The increased damage to the solar panels and internal electronics could be enough to justify "harsh environment". I'd be surprised if it didn't significantly limit the lifetime of the components (and mission).
Oligatory xkcd (though this is for Parker rather than SolO)
I guess the point is that while in absolute terms (ie millions of km) these probes may not seem to be going "close", relative to anything else, and in terms of the harshness of the environment they are going in to, it's plenty close enough...
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