Without These Engineering Tricks Spacecraft Would Die Out There

Key Takeaways

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 in 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 270 degrees Celsius in the shade that's just a few degrees above absolute zero but in direct sunlight radiation can warm a spacecraft hundreds of degrees especially as it gets closer to the Sun temperature extremes like this cause equipment to contract and expand which can damage or shatter it and depending on the mission engineers will have to either insulate their spacecraft from the cold or protect it from the heat and sometimes they have to do both the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission for example had to chase down a comment to get their Rosetta had to do several planetary flybys before heading out toward the asteroid belt on a 10-year journey during that time it went through wild temperature fluctuations so to overcome this engineers fitted Rosetta with metal slats or louvers that could open to let heat radiates away or close to trap it and keep the probe warm and cozy comets like the one Rosetta caught leave a trail of dust in their wake these are frequently the cause of meteor showers that we're seeing here on earth the little dust particles can also pose a threat to spacecraft because they're traveling at thousands of kilometres per hour they can have the effect of sandblasting solar arrays harming lenses and optics or damaging the structure of the spacecraft outright the best strategy is avoidance chart a course where you don't think there's going to be a lot of debris but if it's unavoidable there are measures that you can take for example the Hubble telescope passes through a meteor shower occasionally and scientists will have to rotate it so the big solar panels are edged on to the incoming hazard minimizing its surface area like a fencer standing sideways but even if a spacecraft can keep itself at the right temperature and avoid physical impacts there's another hazard that will always get them in the end spacecraft are exposed to extreme radiation all the time mostly in the form of high-energy charged particles the particles can come from the Sun or just be zipping around the galaxy as cosmic rays they can also be trapped by the Earth's magnetic field forming enormous bands of protons and electrons called the Van Allen belts not only do these particles pose a threat to humans but they can damage the electronics inside of spacecraft as well they can cause a current to flow on the surface of a craft for example or burn out computer chips they can even change the contents of individual memory cells corrupting the data the spacecraft's computers need to function if the computers fail or valuable data gets corrupted a whole mission can be ruined so engineers have to come up with strategies to protect this electronic equipment from radiation in space it's known as space hardening they can try and shield the electronics but the shielding is heavy and weight ads cost to the launch so spacecraft have redundant electronics like three chips performing the same operation simultaneously if radiation causes one to make an error the other two can check its work and overrule it this way they can just use commercial electronics - which is cheaper interestingly electronics today are more sensitive to space radiation than they were in the 60s and 70s to make them more robust the chips themselves can be designed in such a way that makes them resistant to radiation designing hardened chips is difficult and expensive though so one of the most popular chips still in use has the processing power of a laptop from almost two decades ago even with all these precautions the best spaceborne electronics are still eventually gonna fail for more epic stories of innovation that shaped our future check out the age of aerospace comm if you liked this video don't forget to take a second and subscribe despite the challenges we have launched an absurd number of satellites into space is there room for more aimée covers that fear one cool thing about Rosetta's Louvre is that they open and close automatically the springs are temperature sensitive because of the metals they were made of so they use no power