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Betsy Congdon Lead Engineer for Parker Solar Probe's heat shield. Curtis Wilkerson - Engineer NASA's Parker Solar Probe is exploring the Sun.

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Engineers show us the strength of the spacecraft's protective shield.

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Betsy: Here we have a piece of the heat shield for Parker Solar Probe which is a sandwich panel, made of carbon

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that is like the graphic epoxy you might find in your golf clubs or your tennis rackets

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some carbon foam, and then another piece of carbon-carbon on the back.

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It's very light weight, as you can see. And here I've got a blowtorch

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and I'm gonna use it to get the front surface of this glowing hot.

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And then we will have a nice demonstrator come in and touch the back with his hands.

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Let's get this started.

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30 seconds later Betsy: You can start seeing it glowing red. The real heat shield gets up

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to about 2500 degrees Fahrenheit which we're not going to do today.

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But we are going to get it to a couple of hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

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It's glowing pretty good now. Curtis, why don't you touch the back surface of that?

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What does it feel like?

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Curtis: Pretty cool Betsy: "Nice and cool," he says. Which is just how we like it. Keeping the spacecraft cool.

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