{"id":101403,"date":"2020-01-26T06:04:13","date_gmt":"2020-01-26T14:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/photos-solar-orbiter-encapsulated-inside-launch-shroud"},"modified":"2020-01-26T06:04:13","modified_gmt":"2020-01-26T14:04:13","slug":"photos-solar-orbiter-encapsulated-inside-launch-shroud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/photos-solar-orbiter-encapsulated-inside-launch-shroud","title":{"rendered":"Photos: Solar Orbiter encapsulated inside launch shroud"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/photos-solar-orbiter-encapsulated-inside-launch-shroud2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Airbus-built Solar Orbiter spacecraft has been closed up inside the payload fairing of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket in preparation for liftoff from Cape Canaveral in February on a joint mission between the European Space Agency and NASA.<\/p>\n<p>Technicians inside the Astrotech payload processing facility encapsulated the Solar Orbiter spacecraft \u2014 designed with thermal shielding to protect against the heat of the sun \u2014 inside the Atlas 5\u2019s payload fairing Jan. 20. The spacecraft inside the Atlas 5 rocket\u2019s 4-meter-diameter (13.1-foot) aerodynamic nose shroud will soon travel to ULA\u2019s Vertical Integration Facility, where crane will hoist the payload package atop the launcher.<\/p>\n<p>Valued at nearly $1.7 billion, the Solar Orbiter mission will travel closer to the sun than Mercury, where it will join NASA\u2019s Parker Solar Probe for tandem observations of the solar wind and giant solar eruptions that can affect communications and electrical grids on Earth, plus satellite operations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Airbus-built Solar Orbiter spacecraft has been closed up inside the payload fairing of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket in preparation for liftoff from Cape Canaveral in February on a joint mission between the European Space Agency and NASA. Technicians inside the Astrotech payload processing facility encapsulated the Solar Orbiter spacecraft \u2014 designed [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,8,1491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-space","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}