SENER Aeroespacial has participated in five key components of the Solar Orbiter mission, a joint initiative of the European (ESA) and American (NASA) space agencies to study the Sun, which is scheduled to be launched on February 9 from Cape Canaveral (USA).
The different responsibilities of SENER Aeroespacial in this program represent, as a whole, the largest contract awarded to SENER in its history in the space sector. The company has carried out in parallel the following equipment and systems: the antenna subsystem, the feed-throughs subsystem, the Boom instrument and the EDP and So-phi scientific instruments.
In all of them, the intense radiation and high temperatures to which the equipment will be exposed have posed a number of technical and technological challenges in the satellite's development. In the case of the equipment positioned on the probe's exterior, when the satellite reaches its orbit’s closest point to the sun, it will need to withstand solar radiation of 17,000 Watts per square meter, and the external equipment will reach operating temperatures in the 400°C range. At the orbit’s farthest point from the sun, the satellite will experience temperatures under –100°C.