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An inhabited mission on Mars is meeting (very) slowly for the people of NASA. There is a lot of incredibly specific planning going on on another planet, and Mars will give scientists and engineers a long list of challenges, but there is not one thing that no global expedition could pass: a heat shield.
Mankind does not have much interest in visiting planets without atmosphere – at least not yet – and when a spaceship goes down on the surface of a new planet, it will have to deal with the intense friction between the ship and the different gases. that surrounds the planet. Given all this, NASA has launched a new type of heat shield this week, which could be perfectly suitable for future missions on Mars and beyond.
As Reuters reports, the new heat shield is called ADEPT, which stands for Adaptive Deployable Entry Placement Technology. It's a very elegant way of saying that it's a heat shield that deploys when it's needed. The shield, which would be located at the front of a spaceship when it enters the atmosphere of a planet, opens like a flower and prevents heat. intense to damage or destroy the ship itself.
What makes it so special, is that, until now, heat shields were static components of a spacecraft. The rest of the spacecraft must be built keeping in mind the heat shield, which seriously limits the design of a crewed vessel. With a deployable shield, the ship can essentially be what its designers want it to be, and the shield can be deployed to do its job whenever necessary.
NASA tested the new heat shield this week, launching its test rocket from New Mexico and monitoring the deployment of the shield as the rocket made its comeback. The group did not offer much detail as to how the test was conducted, but this information will be released once NASA has had the opportunity to review the material that has returned to Earth.
Source of the picture: UP Aerospace
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