| US to send spacecraft to Sun |
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| World Mirror | |
| Written by Team Josh | |
| Tuesday, 06 May 2008 | |
 While India is planning to send a un manned space craft to Moon, US scientists are planning to send a spacecraft to the sun to study the streams of charged particles it hurls into space.Experts have grappled with this mission concept for over 30 years. Now, a team at NASA’s Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) is developing a special spacecraft for the Solar Probe mission. At closest approach, Solar Probe would zip past the sun at 200 km per second, protected by a carbon-composite heat shield that must withstand up to 1,400 degrees Celsius, and also survive blasts of radiation and energized dust at levels not experienced by any previous spacecraft. APL will design and build the spacecraft, on a schedule to launch in 2015. The compact, solar-powered probe would weigh about 500 kg. Preliminary designs of the spacecraft include carbon-foam-filled solar shield – 9 feet in diameter, and 6 inches thick – atop the spacecraft body.
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