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The sunshield component attaches to the main spacecraft, and its booms expand outward spreading out the heat shield and separating the layers. [24] During launch the shield is folded up; later, when it is in space, it is carefully unfurled. [24] When the sunshield is fully spread open, it is 14.6 meters (48 ft) wide by 21.1 meters (69 ft) long ...
A proposal for a 3,000 ton diffraction mesh was made in 1997 by Edward Teller, Lowell Wood, and Roderick Hyde, [19] although in 2002 these same authors argued for blocking solar radiation in the stratosphere rather than in orbit given then-current space launch technologies.
Whipple shield used on NASA's Stardust probe. The Whipple shield or Whipple bumper, invented by Fred Whipple, [1] is a type of spaced armor shielding to protect crewed and uncrewed spacecraft from hypervelocity impact / collisions with micrometeoroids and orbital debris whose velocities generally range between 3 and 18 kilometres per second (1.9 and 11.2 mi/s).
[1] [37]: 31 The solar shield is hexagonal, mounted on the Sun-facing side of the spacecraft, 2.3 m (7 ft 7 in) in diameter, [38] 11.4 cm (4.5 in) thick, and is made of two panels of reinforced carbon–carbon composite with a lightweight 11-centimeter-thick (4.5 in) carbon foam core, [39] which is designed to withstand temperatures outside the ...
The shield's fully deployed dimensions were planned as 14.162 m × 21.197 m (46.46 ft × 69.54 ft). [35] Keeping within the shadow of the sunshield limits the field of regard of Webb at any given time. The telescope can see 40 percent of the sky from any one position, but can see all of the sky over a period of six months. [36]
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This heat shield was composed of phenolic formaldehyde resin. During reentry, this material charred and melted away, absorbing and carrying away the intense heat in the process. The heat shield has several outer coverings: a pore seal, a moisture barrier (a white reflective coating), and a silver Mylar thermal coating that looks like aluminum foil.
The backshell and heat shield are made of the same materials, but the heat shield has a thicker, 13 mm (1 ⁄ 2 in), layer of the ablator. Instead of being painted, the backshell was covered with a very thin aluminized PET film blanket to protect it from the cold of deep space. The blanket vaporized during entry into the Martian atmosphere.