Heat shields are designed to protect the surface and cargo of a spacecraft as it enters an atmosphere. Aerospace engineers in ...

Credit: Marc Ward/Stocktrek Images via Getty Images; elements courtesy of NASA A team of researchers from Texas A&M University is developing a new 3D printed material that can release a coolant gas ...

ESA is preparing to test a very cool new fold-out heat shield for protecting spacecraft on re-entry. The Pridwen won't burn away like ablative heat shields, and it'll also slow falling satellites down ...

Flying at hypersonic speeds — defined as Mach 5 and above — is likely the toughest environment to engineer materials for. At these speeds, temperatures can reach beyond (1,727° C), straining even the ...

Space Forge, a Cardiff-based company, is set to test its groundbreaking heat shield, known as Pridwen, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 mission later this year, Space.com reports. The ingenious-looking space ...

NASA identified more than 100 locations where ablative thermal protective material was liberated during its speedy reentry. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate ...

Bringing a spacecraft back to Earth means dealing with the intense heat of reentry. Heat shields can protect a vehicle from high temperatures, but the shield is destroyed in the process. The ESA is ...

Space exploration is generally a dangerous business by design, but the different stages of a spacecraft launch and recovery come with different grades of danger. And at the top of the list sits ...

Click to open image viewer. This is a fragment of the heat shield of Gemini VIII, which carried astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott into orbit on March 16, 1966. They accomplished the first ...

Frictions exerted during atmospheric reentry are enough to rend spacecraft into comets of glowing slag if not properly mitigated — that’s a good thing, when intentional, but otherwise nearly always ...

The heat shield that will protect NASA’s Orion spacecraft during its first test mission next year is complete and ready to ship from Manchester, N.H., to the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida ...