Using a specially built fixture to hold samples of new ablative materials, researchers from Marshall Space Flight Center, located in Huntsville, Alabama, mounted the test materials on special arms atop the lab’s 200-foot solar tower and exposed them to concentrated solar radiation. The materials scorched in the test were samples of heat shields that NASA plans to use as a new advanced thermal protection system in future spacecraft for aerocapture flight maneuvers.
The solar tower used its 212 computercontrolled mirrors, called heliostats, to track the sun and focus sunlight on the target, simulating the high heat encountered during an aerocapture maneuver.
“It’s worked beautifully,” said Bill Congdon, manager of the ARA Ablatives Laboratory, the Colorado-based manufacturer of the advanced materials for NASA. The structure created on the tower high above the New Mexico desert allowed him to test 2-foot by 2-foot panels of material, subjecting the sample to the intense heat of 1,500 suns. “We wanted to make sure it doesn’t debond — that’s the purpose of this,” Congdon said, noting the charred test panel was still in one piece after a blast of heat.