Nasa Passes Over Pica For Orion's Heat Shields

摘要

NASA has selected an Apollo-era material for the ablative heat shields that will protect the Orion crew capsule during atmospheric re-entry, the U.S. space agency announced in an April 7 press release.rnAvcoat, a material used for the Apollo capsule heat shield and on select regions of the space shuttle orbiter in its earliest flights, was put back into production for a three-year study that resulted in two final candidates.rnNASA, working with Orion prime contractor Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Denver, selected Avcoat over a newer material, Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator (PICA), that was used on NASA's comet-chasing Stardust mission to protect a sample canister returned to Earth in 2006.