Victoria from Mount Vernon: What keeps the satellite's solar panels from burning up? Okay, that again goes back to this question of aerobraking and orbit insertion. And it's a constant adjustment as we're aerobraking to make sure that we don't get too deeply into the atmosphere. The deeper you go into the atmosphere, the more dense it is and the more friction and more heating you get during that time period. So during the phase where we're aerobraking, there are people constantly monitoring the spacecraft and making sure we don't go too deeply down and making sure that the spacecraft is healthy. They're constantly checking the temperatures and adjusting the orbit of the spacecraft, making little movements with the thrusters, making sure that we never get that close to the planet and deep enough into the atmosphere that they actually do burn up.
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NASA ID
ksc_080805_mro_smrekar4
Date Created
August 18, 2005
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KSC
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video
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NASA or National Aeronautics and Space Administration
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