SpaceX continues to improve the design of the Starship heat shield and has added small tanks to help with the engine restart. The new designs were covered by Felix Schlang at What About It? Brian Wang ...

That’s when crew members started to spot big cracks on Orion’s lower surface, where the capsule’s exterior bonds to its heat shield. But why wouldn’t a shield that has endured temperatures ...

The delay is due to problems with the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield. Orion is the capsule in which crew members for each mission will travel, and it must withstand temperatures of nearly 5,000 ...

The most common form of heat shield used today is made of phenol plastic. First developed in the 1950s, these protect returning spacecraft by what is called ablative shielding.

NASA finally knows what caused the erosion of the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield following its historic trip to the Moon in 2022, but the space agency is not telling, at least not yet.

A heat shield is essential for even a partially reusable spacecraft: It protects the vehicle as it encounters unfathomable speeds and temperatures during atmospheric reentry. NASA says it spent 15 ...

For those who follow NASA's human spaceflight program, when the Orion spacecraft's heat shield cracked and chipped away during atmospheric reentry on the unpiloted Artemis I test flight in late ...

The heat shield, already installed at the base of the Orion spacecraft, will take the brunt of the heating when the capsule blazes through Earth's atmosphere at the end of the 10-day mission.

Technicians inspect the heat shield on the Orion capsule after Artemis 1. The heat shield lost most charred material than expected, but NASA managers said it was not a safety issue. Credit ...

Space Forge, a Cardiff-based company, is set to test its groundbreaking heat shield, known as Pridwen, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 mission later this year, Space.com reports. The ingenious-looking space ...

The heat shield and backup data recorder splashed down in the Pacific Ocean about two hours after launch, hundreds of miles off the coast of Hawaii, where a team on a boat was stationed to recover ...