Puzzle Page #2: Water
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Congratulations on finding today's 3.8 digital souvenir sticker.
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We’ll share a new sticker on a different secret webpage every day from December 17-24, 2024, so watch for new daily puzzles to solve to download other souvenir stickers.
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Today's Puzzle Answer: Water
It's not easy building a spacecraft that can go so close to the Sun. Parker Solar Probe was designed to withstand the extreme temperature fluctuations for the mission.
Parker makes use of a heat shield known as the Thermal Protection System, or TPS, which is 8 feet (2.4 meters) in diameter and 4.5 inches (about 115 mm) thick, and made out of a carbon composite foam sandwiched between two carbon plates. The specialized material allows the Sun-facing side of the heat shield to reach up to 2,500° F (1,371° C) while keeping the spacecraft body behind it at a comfortable 85° F (30° C).
But Parker's solar arrays need to peek out from behind the heat shield in order to generate power for the spacecraft. To keep them cool, Parker uses a cooling system that runs on a surprisingly simple coolant: About a gallon (3.7 liters) of deionized water.
The spacecraft bus (the section behind the heat shield) is exposed to temperatures ranging from 50° F (10° C) to 257° F (125° C). Water is one of very few coolant materials that can remain liquid across those ranges. To keep the water from boiling at the higher end of the temperatures, it is pressurized so the boiling point exceeds 257° F (125° C).
Learn more about how Parker beats the heat.
Learn more about the #3point8 Challenge.