Aerogel is translucent light blue and extremely light; people also call it "solid smoke." Dr. Stephen Jones, a material scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA, developed the new aerogel. Its main component is silicon dioxide and glass, but because it is 99.8% air, its density is only one-thousandth of that of glass. Aerogel seems "weak," but it is very durable. It can withstand the pressure of its mass thousands of times and will not melt until the temperature reaches 1200 ℃. In addition, its thermal conductivity and refractive index are also very low, and its insulation capacity is 39 times stronger than the best glass fiber. Because of these characteristics, aerogel has become an irreplaceable material in space exploration. It is used for thermal insulation by the Russian "Peace" space station and the American "Mars Pathfinder" probe.
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