SHINeS: Space and High-Irradiance Near-Sun Simulator

TL;DR

SHINeS is a specialized space simulator designed to replicate near-Sun thermal environments, enabling the study of solar radiation effects on asteroid surfaces and potential disruption mechanisms.

Contribution

The paper introduces SHINeS, a novel high-irradiance near-Sun simulator capable of studying asteroid surface responses to intense solar radiation.

Findings

SHINeS successfully replicates solar conditions down to 0.06 au.

It provides a platform to investigate asteroid disruption mechanisms.

The system can be adapted for various high-radiation studies.

Abstract

We present SHINeS, a space simulator which can be used to replicate the thermal environment in the immediate neighborhood of the Sun down to a heliocentric distance r~0.06 au. The system consists of three main parts: the solar simulator which was designed and constructed in-house, a vacuum chamber, and the probing and recording equipment needed to monitor the experimental procedures. Our motivation for building this experimental system was to study the effect of intense solar radiation on the surfaces of asteroids when their perihelion distances become smaller than the semi-major axis of the orbit of Mercury. Comparisons between observational data and recent orbit and size-frequency models of the population of near-Earth asteroids suggest that asteroids are super-catastrophically destroyed when they approach the Sun. Whereas the current models are agnostic about the disruption mechanism, SHINeS was developed to study the mechanism or mechanisms responsible. The system can, however, be used for other applications that need to study the effects of high solar radiation on other natural or artificial objects.