Without These Engineering Tricks Spacecraft Would Die Out There
Space is an extreme environment. With the severe temperatures, endless debris, and harsh radiation, how do spacecraft survive? Is There Space for 12000 ...
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Living down here on Earth it’s easy to forget that we have it pretty good, at least in terms of our environment not doing everything it can to destroy us and everything we love. But that’s not the case in space, and scientists have had to solve all sorts of challenges to keep space stations, probes, and satellites functioning in such an extreme environment. For example, they have to engineer their way around problems like temperature. Space can be extremely cold; the background temperature of space is minus two hundred seventy degrees celsius in the shade, just a few degrees above absolute zero. But in direct sunlight radiation can warm a spacecraft hundreds of degrees, especially when it’s closer to the sun. Temperature extremes can damage or shatter delicate equipment, and depending on ...
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Living down here on Earth it’s easy to forget that we have it pretty good, at least in terms of our environment not doing everything it can to destroy us and everything we love. But that’s not the case in space, and scientists have had to solve all sorts of challenges to keep space stations, probes, and satellites functioning in such an extreme environment. For example, they have to engineer their way around problems like temperature. Space can be extremely cold; the background temperature of space is minus two hundred seventy degrees celsius in the shade, just a few degrees above absolute zero. But in direct sunlight radiation can warm a spacecraft hundreds of degrees, especially when it’s closer to the sun. Temperature extremes can damage or shatter delicate equipment, and depending on ...
