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. 35
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.