http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/nasa-s-parker-probe-will-venture-closer-ever-sun-explore-its-mysterious-atmosphere

Ignoring the lessons of mythology, Betsy Congdon has spent the first decade of her young engineering career on a singular quest: to build something that will fly dangerously close to the sun.

On a drizzly day in May at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, Congdon crouches next to a foil-wrapped test copy of her team's product: a carbon-foam heat shield, a little wider and a lot thinner than a king size mattress. Another copy sits nearby, a flight-ready spare sealed in a metal drum stamped with an unintentionally ironic warning: "Do not expose to direct sunlight."