Apollo 11 made us believe we could do anything, but it could hasten our end

This faith in technology has given us a false sense of security.

The Apollo project gave us the astonishing spectacle of a blue marble rising over the sterile surface of the moon. Of course, the moon was already known to be uninhabitable. But being shown something in high-resolution colour photography makes a stronger impression than being told it by the experts. Our planet appeared in the photos as a small, vulnerable object amid surroundings utterly inimical to life. They showed, in a way that no scientific report could, the importance of keeping the Earth habitable, boosting the environmental movement.

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But the moon landings affected many people in precisely the opposite way. No other public project has been such a spectacular success. The aim was so simple and concrete that everyone could immediately grasp it. Kennedy’s commitment to “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth” was made before the US had even put a man into orbit. Yet it was achieved just eight years later – barely half the time it takes nowadays to build a new railway across London. “Top that,” the Americans can easily say. Fifty years on, no one has.

The trouble with spectacular successes is that they breed complacency. The moon landings reinforced the belief that technology will always be able to solve our problems. Everyone knows the saying, “If we can put a man on the moon, surely we can…” All we need is the will to do it. And a lot of money, of course. But not as much as you might think: the entire Apollo programme, over 12 years, cost about £120 billion in today’s money. That’s how much the US spends on its military in 11 weeks (and Britain in three years). If technology can do that, what can it not do?

ALSO READ: 50 yrs of Apollo 11: How geological maps made the moon landings worthwhile

This faith in technology has given us a false sense of security. Every day we hear urgent warnings about antibiotic resistance, soil depletion, deforestation, loss of biodiversity and of course climate change. These imminent catastrophes are the result of our own behaviour. The obvious solution is to change that behaviour: to stop abusing antibiotics, destroying tropical forests, burning fossil fuels, and so on. Yet we don’t.

Part of the reason we don’t is the expectation that technology will save us. If we can put a man on the moon, surely we can develop new antibiotics, replenish the soil and restore the tropical forests. We can stop climate change by building machines to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. (And anyway, we can build walls to keep out the rising seas.) All we need is better politicians.

Women yet to step on moon but well intertwined with it in literature

The moon is often envisaged as a female entity, which inspired poems on the theme of her gaze as she looks down on Earth benignly.

In the late 17th century, the female English playwright Aphra Behn wrote a smash hit play about a man obsessed with the moon, who was constantly travelling there in his imagination. Exactly 282 years later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin actually made that dream a reality.

Their astonishing achievement on July 20, 1969 led some to worry that the moon would become an object of purely scientific study – a barren and lifeless body, no longer a source of romantic inspiration. Fortunately, this fear did not come to pass.

For example, in the year that marked the 40th anniversary of the landings ten years ago, the then poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy edited To the Moon: An Anthology of Lunar Poems which gathered together works from ancient to modern, and included her own poem, The Woman in the Moon.

And while no woman has yet stepped on to this celestial body, women have long been associated with the moon – with its tidal pull, and the binary thinking that places it secondary in majesty to the sun. It is no wonder, then, that the moon has stimulated some incredible literature by female writers.

The moon is often envisaged as a female entity, which inspired poems on the theme of her gaze as she looks down on Earth benignly. Way back in antiquity, the Greek poet Sappho did just this in her short song describing how:

When, round and full, her silver face, Swims into sight, and lights all space.

This trope continued for millennia and into the 19th century. Louisa May Alcott (author of Little Women) wrote The Mother Moon in 1856, imagining a benevolent maternal moon looking down on the Earth, occasionally hidden but ultimately undiminished by clouds. Also in the 19th century, American poet Emily Dickinson’s moon similarly shone “Her perfect Face Upon the World below”.

ALSO READ: How big is moon and how far is it? Let's put facts into perspective

Duffy’s more recent poem contains these familiar elements, being written in the persona of a woman in the moon – one who is incredulous anyone could have believed instead in a man in the moon. The woman in the moon has spent millennia observing Earth and now implores those gazing up at her to reflect on the neglect humans have wrought on planet Earth, repeating the question “What have you done?”

50 years of Apollo mission: Was Moon landing fake? Here are the facts

Conspiracy theories that claimed that the moon landing was faked and that it was all a Hollywood-like cinematic production shot on Earth have been doing the rounds for decades.

Even fifty years after astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon, there are people who still insist that it never happened and that it was a hoax perpetrated by the US government.

On July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 Mission landed two men on the Moon. Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin piloted the lunar module, which detached from the spacecraft and landed on the Moon's surface. Their commander, Neil Armstrong, became the first man on the Moon. He passed away in 2012 at the age of 82.

However, conspiracy theories that claimed that the moon landing was faked and that it was all a Hollywood-like cinematic production shot on Earth have been doing the rounds for decades.

The Associated Press recently listed the most common claims and the counters to them:

1) Claim: In the photos from the Moon, the American flag looks like it's flapping in the wind. That would be impossible because there's no air up on the Moon.

Fact: Instead of letting the American flag droop, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) had decided to use a right-angled rod to keep the flag spread out, Roger Launius, Nasa's former chief historian, told AP. According to the report, Armstrong and Aldrin bent the rod a bit by accident, which made it look like the flag was in motion. Further, Launius told AP, the astronauts were worried the flagpole would fall down after they had twisted it into the ground, so they snapped the photos quickly, capturing the flag as it was still in motion.

ALSO READ: 50th anniversary of Apollo 11: How we came to know a lot about the Moon

2) Claim: No stars can be seen in the background of any photographs as Nasa knew that astronomers would be able to use them to figure out whether the photos were taken on the Earth or the Moon.

Fact: Astronomer Emily Drabek-Maunder, from the Royal Observatory Greenwich in London, told AP that the shutter speeds on the astronauts' cameras were too fast to capture the stars' faint light.

India's Chandrayaan-2 moon mission to take off on July 22, Isro confirms

On July 15, less than an hour before its 2:51 am scheduled take-off, the launch of Chandrayaan-2 had to be postponed due to a snag in its most powerful rocket.

Days after its scheduled take-off had to be postponed due to a technical glitch, India's second mission to the Moon — Chandrayaan-2 — is now confirmed to be launched on Monday (July 22).

"Chandrayaan-2 launch, which was put off due to a technical snag on July 15, 2019, is now rescheduled for 2:43 pm IST on Monday, July 22, 2019," said an Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) official.

Chandrayaan-2 was originally scheduled to take off in the first week of January but was rescheduled for 2:50 am on July 15.

It had to again be postponed after a snag was observed in its most powerful rocket, less than an hour before its launch from a spaceport. Isro scientists had put the launch on hold to assess the seriousness of the problem with the heavylift rocket GSLV Mk-III rocket carrying the satellite that put a halt to the ambitious Rs 976 crore lunar mission.

ALSO READ: Chandrayaan-2: A timeline of India's mission to the moon from 2003 to 2019

The lift-off of the three-component spacecraft weighing 3,850 kg and comprising an orbiter, the lander and the rover will take place from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota, off the coast of Andhra Pradesh.

The satellite is supposed to explore the uncharted lunar south pole, 11 years after Isro's successful first lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, which made more than 3,400 orbits around the moon and was operational for 312 days till August 29, 2009.

It will take 54 days to accomplish the task of landing on the moon through meticulously planned orbital phases.

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One small step for a man': Did we mishear Armstrong's first words on Moon?

Armstrong insisted that he actually said, 'That's one small step for a man.' In fact, in the official transcript, Nasa transcribes the quote as 'that's one small step for (a) man'.

Business Standard : On July 20, 1969, an estimated 650 million people watched in suspense as Neil Armstrong descended a ladder towards the surface of the Moon.

As he took his first steps, he uttered words that would be written into history books for generations to come: “That’s one small step for man. One giant leap for mankind.”

Or at least that’s how the media reported his words.

But Armstrong insisted that he actually said, “That’s one small step for a man.” In fact, in the official transcript of the Moon landing mission, NASA transcribes the quote as “that’s one small step for (a) man.”

As a linguist, I’m fascinated by mistakes between what people say and what people hear.

In fact, I recently conducted a study on ambiguous speech, using Armstrong’s famous quote to try to figure out why and how we successfully understand speech most of the time, but also make the occasional mistake.

Our extraordinary speech-processing abilities

Despite confusion over Armstrong’s words, speakers and listeners have a remarkable ability to agree on what is said and what is heard.

When we talk, we formulate a thought, retrieve words from memory and move our mouths to produce sound. We do this quickly, producing, in English, around five syllables every second.

The process for listeners is equally complex and speedy. We hear sounds, which we separate into speech and non-speech information, combine the speech sounds into words, and determine the meanings of these words. Again, this happens nearly instantaneously, and errors rarely occur.

These processes are even more extraordinary when you think more closely about the properties of speech. Unlike writing, speech doesn’t have spaces between words. When people speak, there are typically very few pauses within a sentence.

Yet listeners have little trouble determining word boundaries in real time. This is because there are little cues – like pitch and rhythm – that indicate when one word stops and the next begins.

How drawing map of the Moon for Apollo became a national priority

President John F. Kennedy announced that a national goal for the decade was to send a man to the Moon and back safely.

Business Standard : At an International Astronomical Union meeting in 1955, noted astronomer Gerard Kuiper asked for suggestions and collaborators on a project to make a map of the Moon. At the time, the best lunar atlases had hand-drawn images, and Kuiper wanted to use state-of-the-art telescopes to make a photographic atlas.

Only one person responded.

That was indicative of the astronomical community’s general attitude toward the Moon. After all, telescopes were designed to look at distant objects, and the Moon is rather close, and boring as well, since its appearance doesn’t change. Furthermore, Kuiper wanted to make a map, and that’s the sort of thing that geologists, not astronomers, do.

Kuiper proceeded, though, and by 1960, he had moved his small operation to the University of Arizona in Tucson. There he could take advantage of the region’s mountaintops and clear skies, and the university’s willingness to move into a field of study that defied traditional departmental boundaries. The next year, President John F. Kennedy announced that a national goal for the decade was to send a man to the Moon and back safely. Suddenly, the niche pursuit of making maps of the Moon had turned into a national priority.

For the next several years, Kuiper’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory produced progressively better images of the Moon, using telescopes built for the purpose. Later they used images from robotic spacecraft to the Moon to produce a series of increasingly sophisticated atlases of the lunar surface.

As a child, I was focused on the accomplishments of the astronauts, starting with the day in 1961 that the principal burst into my kindergarten classroom to tell us that Alan Shepard had been launched into space, and culminating in the Apollo 11 landing in 1969.

Like most of us who watched all those missions, I didn’t really expect to go into space science or aerospace engineering. But when I got the chance to study Apollo samples in graduate school, it’s not surprising that I gravitated to them. I eventually spent my career studying rocks from space. Similarly, I didn’t think much about the groundwork that went into mapping the Moon until I ended up at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Once I started learning the stories and talking to those involved, though, I came to appreciate the number of extraordinary things that were done in that era as a result of the political race to the Moon.

Chandrayaan-2 mission: From cost to India's space run, all you need to know

Cost of Chandrayaan-2 mission is Rs 978 crore, including Rs 603 crore for the orbiter, lander, rover, navigation and ground support network and Rs 375 crore for Geo-stationary Satellite Launch Vehicle.

Business Standard : India will launch a lunar mission on July 15, attempting to become the fourth country to land on the moon after the former Soviet Union, US and China, to cement its place among the world’s space faring nations.

The Chandrayaan-2 mission aims to deliver a rover to an elevated plane close to the uncharted lunar South Pole on September 6 or 7 and investigate the surface for signs of water and potentially new sources of abundant energy. It’s one step in an envisioned progression that includes putting a space station in orbit and — eventually — landing a crew on the moon.

"We will launch our second moon mission (Chandrayaan-2) on July 15 at 02:15 a.m., to land by September 6 or 7 near the lunar south pole, where no one went so far", said Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) Chairman K Sivan.

Moon vehicle

Chandrayaan, which means “moon vehicle” in Sanskrit, exemplifies the resurgence of international interest in space. The US, China and private corporations are among those racing to explore everything from resource mining to extraterrestrial colonies on the moon and even Mars. “We have left no stone unturned to make the lunar soft landing a success,” Kailasavadivoo Sivan, chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation, the country’s equivalent to Nasa, told reporters at the headquarters in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru.

Most complex mission by ISRO

The upcoming moon mission is the most complex ISRO has attempted. Two Chandrayaan modules — an orbiter and a lander — will be stacked together inside a launch vehicle equipped to lift heavy satellites into orbit. A third module, the lunar rover, will roll out on landing and operate for at least 14 days on the surface. It will wander about 1,300 feet, surveying a surface that reaches minus 250 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 157 degrees Celsius) in the shadows.

Details:

"The orbiter with lander and rover will be launched onboard our advanced heavy rocket (GSLV Mark III) from the Sriharikota spaceport to inject it in the earth's elliptical orbit at 170km perigee (nearest to earth) and 30,000km apogee (farthest from earth) for cruising towards the moon over the next 16 days," said Sivan. Sriharikota is an island off the Bay of Bengal in Andhra Pradesh and about 80km northeast of Chennai.

Reality or studio shoot? Why moon landing conspiracy theories still exist

In the US, opinion polls indicate that between 5-10% of Americans distrust the official version of events.

Business Standard : Bill Kaysing was a former US Navy officer who worked as a technical writer for one of the rocket manufacturers for NASA’s Apollo moon missions. He claimed that he had inside knowledge of a government conspiracy to fake the moon landings, and many conspiracy theories about the Apollo moon landings which persist to this day can be traced back to his 1976 book, We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle.

The basic template of the conspiracy theory is that NASA couldn’t manage to safely land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s as President John F Kennedy had promised, so it only sent astronauts into Earth orbit. Conspiracy theorists then argue that NASA staged the moon landings in a film studio and that there are tell-tale signs on the footage and the photos that give the game away. They claim that NASA has covered up the elaborate hoax ever since.

Moon landing sceptics point to supposed clues such as photos that appear to show the astronauts in front of cross hairs that were etched on the camera glass, or a mysterious letter C visible on a moon rock. These and many other seeming anomalies have been debunked, but moon landing conspiracy theories have persisted in the popular imagination.

In the US, opinion polls indicate that between 5-10% of Americans distrust the official version of events. In the UK, a YouGov poll in 2012 found that 12% of Britons believed in the conspiracy theory. A recent survey found that 20% of Italians believe that the moon landings were a hoax, while a 2018 poll in Russia put the figure there as high as 57%, unsurprising given the popularity of anti-Western conspiracy theories there.

Ready to disbelieve

That Kaysing’s conspiracy theory took hold in mid-1970s America is in large part due to a wider crisis of trust in the country at the time. In 1971, citizens read the leaked Pentagon Papers, showing that the Johnson administration had been systematically lying about the Vietnam War. They tuned in nightly to the hearings about the Watergate break-in and subsequent cover-up.

A series of congressional reports detailed CIA malfeasance both at home and abroad, and in 1976, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded – in contrast to the Warren Commission more than a decade earlier – that there was a high probability that there had been a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. These revelations had helped fuel a wider shift in conspiracy thinking since the late 1960s, from a belief in external enemies, such as Communists, to the suspicion that the American state was itself conspiring against its citizens.

Adani's new 'big money maker' plan: Selling data services to Amazon, Google

It's an approach that's been a hallmark of Adani's empire: Pick a hot new industry -- especially one favored by the government -- build the infrastructure, and keep going till you hit the top.

A string of successful bets on ports, mining and commodities helped transform Gautam Adani from a nondescript diamond trader into a tycoon with a net worth of $10 billion.

Now the Indian businessman is setting his sight on what he believes could become another big money maker: Selling data storage services to companies such as Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.

India’s government is weighing a new law that would require data to be stored locally, and his conglomerate Adani Enterprises Ltd. has said it expects to invest Rs 700 billion ($10.2 billion) to build data parks in a southern state over the next two decades.

The billionaire’s hope is to capitalize on demand from foreign technology companies, who are expanding in India as the use of smartphones and Internet surges.

If the proposed law goes through “it will explode data storage requirements, and that will need capacity,” Adani said in a rare interview in New Delhi. “This will be a multi-billion-dollar project that will bring in the Googles and the Amazons of the world.”

It’s an approach that’s been a hallmark of Adani’s empire: Pick a hot new industry -- especially one favored by the government -- build the infrastructure, and keep going till you hit the top. Much like China, India has sought to draw more private investment to ramp up its infrastructure as it attempts to double GDP to $5 trillion over coming years.

‘Nation building’

When the Indian government pushed for gas projects in cities for cooking and transportation, Adani’s group bid for and won many licenses, a move that could make it the biggest player in gas retailing. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged to develop local manufacturing of defense equipment, Adani quickly built the capacity to supply the military by going on an aggressive shopping spree of defense contractors.

And when Adani’s group decided to get involved in operations of airports, it bid almost double its main competitors in some cases. A clean sweep in the bidding process is set to add six airfields to the business overnight.

“Our main goal is nation building through infrastructure,” the billionaire said. “The Adani Group has always focused on businesses in line [with] the government’s vision.”

Business Standard

Most excited by India's plan to have own space station: Ex-ISRO chief

Currently, there is only one fully-functional space station in the Earth's lower orbit, the International Space Station (ISS), and astronauts conduct different experiments in it.

Business Standard : Eminent space scientist G Madhavan Nair on Friday described the ISRO's proposed space station as the "most-exciting" project and said it would help India maintain leadership position in space arena.

The former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman said he was really excited by India's plans to have its own space station.

Referring to the ISRO's Gaganyaan mission, Nair, a former Department of Space secretary, noted that India would have the capability to take man to space by 2022.

"From there (after the Gaganyaan project), to establish a space-borne platform (space station) for observations is a logical next step," he told PTI.

"Normally, such major projects take time, to conceive, design, go-ahead and implement," Nair said. "So, if the government has given a note to such a project, I think it's the most exciting as far as ISRO is concerned."

ISRO Chairman K Sivan had announced on Thursday that the proposed space station would weigh around 20 tonnes.

A space station is a spacecraft capable of supporting crew members, designed to remain in space for an extended period of time and for other spacecraft to dock.

Currently, there is only one fully-functional space station in the Earth's lower orbit, the International Space Station (ISS), and astronauts conduct different experiments in it.

The ISS is a partnership between European countries represented by the European Space Agency, the United States (NASA), Japan (JAXA), Canada (CSA) and Russia (Roscosmos). It is the world's largest international cooperative programme in science and technology.

Nair said the ISRO, which he headed from 2003-2009, had to "scale" the proposed space station as per requirements, which would emerge in the 2025-2030 time-frame.

According to him, around $120 billion had been spent on establishing the ISS, which is being maintained at a cost of $6-7 billion annually.

"That kind of thing (scale of ISS), I don't think we should embark on, (we need) really an affordable, low-cost platform where ordinary scientists can go and do the experiments and also it can meet various national priorities," he said.

To establish a 20-tonne space station is within the reach of the ISRO, Nair said.

"(ISRO's) GSLV-Mk-III (launch vehicle) can carry a 10-tonne module at a time. So, with available capacity, we can do that.

Rare 'superflares' from Sun could disrupt earth's communications

Astronomers probing the edges of the Milky Way have in recent years observed superflares -- huge bursts of energy from stars that can be seen from hundreds of light years away.

Superflares erupted from the Sun could disrupt electronics across the Earth, causing widespread black outs and shorting out communication satellites in orbit, scientists warn.

Astronomers probing the edges of the Milky Way have in recent years observed superflares -- huge bursts of energy from stars that can be seen from hundreds of light years away.

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Until recently, researchers assumed that such explosions occurred mostly on stars that, unlike Earth's, were young and active.

Scientists from University of Colorado (CU) Boulder in the US have found that superflares can occur on older, quieter stars like our own -- albeit more rarely, or about once every few thousand years.

If a superflare erupted from the sun, the Earth would likely sit in the path of a wave of high-energy radiation, researchers said.

Such a blast could disrupt electronics across the globe, causing widespread black outs and shorting out communication satellites in orbit.

"Our study shows that superflares are rare events. But there is some possibility that we could experience such an event in the next 100 years or so," said Yuta Notsu, a researcher in CU Boulder.

Scientists first discovered this phenomenon from an unlikely source: the Kepler Space Telescope. The NASA spacecraft, launched in 2009, seeks out planets circling stars far from Earth.

However, it also found something odd about those stars themselves. In rare events, the light from distant stars seemed to get suddenly, and momentarily, brighter.

Researchers dubbed those humongous bursts of energy "superflares."

Notsu explained that normal-sized flares are common on the Sun. However, what the Kepler data was showing seemed to be much bigger, on the order of hundreds to thousands of times more powerful than the largest flare ever recorded with modern instruments on Earth.

"When our sun was young, it was very active because it rotated very fast and probably generated more powerful flares," said Notsu, also of the National Solar Observatory in Boulder.

Meet Zora, the robot companion, caregiver for elderly patients in France

The experience at Jouarre provides a window into a future when we will rely more on robots to help care for loved ones as they age.

This is Zora.

It may not look like much — more cute toy than futuristic marvel — but this robot is at the center of an experiment in France to change care for elderly patients.

When Zora arrived at this nursing facility an hour outside Paris, a strange thing began happening: Many patients developed an emotional attachment, treating it like a baby, holding and cooing, giving it kisses on the head.

Zora, which can cost up to $18,000, offered companionship in a place where life can be lonely. Families can visit only so much, and staff members are stretched.

Patients at the hospital, called Jouarre, have dementia and other conditions that require round-the-clock care.

The nurse at Jouarre who oversees Zora controls the robot from a laptop. He often stands out of view so patients don’t know it’s him at the controls.

The robot can have a conversation because the nurse types words into a laptop for the robot to speak. Some patients refer to Zora as “she,” others “he.”

Zora often leads exercises and plays games.

Not everyone is enamored.

Robotics still has a long way to go before there’s a realistic chance of having a humanoid nurse.

Zora doesn’t dispense medicine, take blood pressure or change bedsheets. At Jouarre, Zora was viewed by some as a superfluous tool that just “keeps the patients busy,” according to a nurse, Sophie Riffault.

Another nurse, Nathalie Racine, said she wouldn’t let a robot feed patients even if it could. Humans shouldn’t delegate such intimate moments to machines. “Nothing will ever replace the human touch, the human warmth our patients need,” she said.

The experience at Jouarre provides a window into a future when we will rely more on robots to help care for loved ones as they age.

Zora Bots, the Belgium-based provider of the robot at Jouarre, says it has sold over 1,000 of the robots to health care facilities around the world, including in the United States, Asia and Middle East. It is part of a growing emphasis on robotics focused on care. A robot dog made by Sony has been marketed as a companion for older adults.

“We need to help with loneliness,” said Tommy Deblieck, the co-chief executive of ZoraBots.

Giving robots more responsibility to care for people in the twilight of their lives may seem like a dystopian prospect, but many see it as an inevitability.

In nearly every country, the population of older adults is rising. The number of people over 60 will more than double to 2.1 billion by 2050, according to the United Nations.

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Parker solar probe: How Nasa plans to beat extreme heat close to the sun

The spacecraft, launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on August 12, will transmit its first scientific observations in December.

With NASA launching a historic Parker Solar Probe deeper into the solar atmosphere than any mission before it, the question arises: Why won't it melt?

Inside the solar atmosphere -- a region known as the corona -- the probe will provide observations of what drives the wide range of particles, energy and heat that course through the region.

The spacecraft will travel through material with temperatures greater than several million degrees Celsius while being bombarded with intense sunlight.

According to the US space agency, Parker Solar Probe has been designed to withstand the extreme conditions and temperature fluctuations for the mission.

"The key lies in its custom heat shield and an autonomous system that helps protect the mission from the Sun's intense light emission, but does allow the coronal material to 'touch' the spacecraft," NASA said in a statement.

While the Parker Solar Probe will travel through a space with temperatures of several million degrees, the surface of the heat shield that faces the Sun will only get heated to about 1,400 degree Celsius.

The probe makes use of a heat shield known as the Thermal Protection System, or TPS, which is eight feet in diameter and 4.5 inches thick.

ALSO READ: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar: The man behind Nasa's mission to touch the Sun

Those few inches of protection mean that just on the other side of the shield, the spacecraft body will sit at a comfortable 30 degrees Celsius.

The TPS was designed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, and was built at Carbon-Carbon Advanced Technologies, using a carbon composite foam sandwiched between two carbon plates.

This lightweight insulation will be accompanied by a finishing touch of white ceramic paint on the sun-facing plate, to reflect as much heat as possible.

"Tested to withstand up to 1,650 degrees Celsius, the TPS can handle any heat the Sun can send its way, keeping almost all instrumentation safe," said NASA.

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