Things are heating up in the atmosphere, and NASA is helping space start-ups stay cool.
NASA has decades of expertise in creating technology that protects spacecraft from the intense heat generated when entering an atmosphere. As emerging companies develop innovative ways to do business in space, they know where to turn - and the agency is responding by offering its know-how and the advanced materials invented here to help enable new uses for space with big benefits for humanity.
Since 1951, when Harvey Allen, an engineer at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, showed a blunt-shaped capsule helps deflect the heat of atmospheric entry, Ames has led the agency in designing, developing, and testing thermal protection systems (TPS). These heat shields protect re-entering spacecraft and their cargo, such as pieces of a 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid or astronauts who will travel in the Orion crew capsule.
"In the past, the government was the only entity that needed heat shields," said David Hash, chief of the Entry Systems and Technology Division at Ames, "That's changing dramatically today. Companies that see new opportunities for commercial activities in space now have a business case to launch spacecraft and bring them back to Earth. NASA is uniquely positioned to show them how to do it."
NASA works to encourage commercial growth. With an increasing number of start-ups who have smart ideas but limited funding and spaceflight experience, NASA experts at Ames and Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, are doing their part to help. And success is already in the air - or passing safely through it.
