The protection on the front of the orbiter is quite a combination of old/new tech. Solar Orbiter’s radiation-hardened instruments will be protected from the sw

The protection on the front of the orbiter is quite a combination of old/new tech. Solar Orbiter’s radiation-hardened instruments will be protected from the sweltering heat by a shield covered with doors that periodically open to allow the spacecraft’s instruments to image the sun. About half the size of an average parking space, the Solar Orbiter’s heat shield is a mix of modern and ancient technology. Its outermost layer is a strip of titanium just a fraction of a millimeter thick and coated on the sun-facing side with charred animal bone. This is the same stuff used by prehistoric humans to paint cave walls, but its properties also make it great for radiating heat away from a spacecraft. The process for coating the Titanium heat shield with the black charred animal bone is developed by an Irish company, called Enbio: http://www.enbio.eu/thermal-control/ http://www.enbio.eu/thermal-control/