Spacecraft have long used heat shields for protection during entry into planetary atmospheres. Future missions to the outer solar system will need more sophisticated materials than currently exist.
But the extreme heating conditions needed to study new shield materials are difficult to replicate experimentally on Earth.
During high-speed atmospheric entries of up to 100,000 miles per hour, such as those required in missions to the Solar System’s gas giants, the atmospheric gas surrounding the spacecraft turns into plasma (a mixture of ions and electrons) and spacecraft temperatures increase to more than 5,000°C.
To protect the scientific payload, the heat shield material burns in a controlled manner, which pulls the excess heat away from the core of the spacecraft.
Past heat shield testing approaches using lasers, plasma jets, and hypervelocity projectiles suffered from the problem that no single method could simulate the exact heating conditions present...