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NASA has tested a new foldable heat shield Wednesday and it's basically an umbrella, but for the atmospheric entrance.
ADEPT technology (Adaptive Deployable Entry Placement Technology) consists of a woven carbon fabric "skin" stretched over an articulated frame.
This frame folds so that the system takes up less space than conventional thermal screens. NASA says this opens the possibility of designing rockets with much larger payloads. The test units have a diameter of 28 inches when they are deployed.
In addition to isolating spacecraft from the heat of entry into the atmosphere, ADEPT would also slow them down, according to Mary Poppins.
NASA predicted that its flight test on Wednesday would not be high enough to generate significant heat and that its next step would be to test the technology at "higher orbital speeds".
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