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 ...

They saw cracks in the craft's heat shield and divots in the ablative thermal protection layer resembling potholes on a neglected street. This isn't what engineers expected, and they spent the ...

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.

The new heat shield is called Pridwen, named after the shield donned by King Arthur. A private company has plans to test a revolutionary new heat shield that folds and unfolds like origami.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the delays are needed to revise the Orion crew capsule's re-entry trajectory to reduce stress and prevent the sort of unexpected heat shield damage seen after ...

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 ...

NASA’s Artemis program has hit a critical snag—over 100 unexpected cracks have been discovered in the Orion capsule’s heat shield following the uncrewed Artemis I mission. The damage ...

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 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.