Development of a rigid conformal ablator for extreme heat flux applications

Based on the existing ASTERM material, a European rigid conformal ablative heatshield material shall be developed and characterised for application on the Earth re-entry capsule of sample return missions (e.g. Mars, comets, asteroids). A material demonstrator with a representative size and geometry shall be manufactured.

The ASTERM ablative heatshield material has recently been developed (under Astrium RD and TRP-DEAM) and is currently in pre-qualification (under MREP-DEAM2). This development is specifically tailored for application on the Earth return capsule of sample return missions. The material is a low-density carbon-phenolic ablator and is produced by impregnating a low density rigid graphite felt with a phenolic resin.Recent developments by NASA have demonstrated that by replacing the rigid graphite felt in the manufacturing process by a flexible felt can lead to a significant improvement of the material performance: Internal thermo-mechanical stresses are reduced making the material more robust to loads and deflections; thermal performance is improved leading to lower required thickness and therefore lower mass; manufacturable unit sizes are increased which might more easily allow to produce the ERC heatshield as one single piece avoiding interface issues.