Liquid Shell Insulation

A new concept called "liquid shell insulation" has been proposed as a means of temporary thermal protection for scientific instrument probes that are required to operate for short times in hot, high-pressure environments. Liquid shell insulation was conceived to protect probes that would be dropped from spacecraft to great depths in the atmospheres of the outer planets. For example, at a depth of 1,000 km on Jupiter, a probe would have to withstand a pressure of about 4,000 Earth atmospheres (≈0.4 GPa) and a temperature of about 1,800 K. On Earth, liquid shell insulation might be useful for protecting probes that would be inserted in undersea volcanic vents or deep oil wells.