Following a successful inflatable habitat burst test in December 2022, Lockheed Martin conducted another subscale burst test on June 14 in Colorado—and like the first time, it went off with a bang!

Editor's Note: Due to weather delays, NASA is now targeting a Monday (July 23) launch date for the IRVE-3 inflatable heat shield prototype launch. The launch from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia ...

NASA's LOFTID technology demonstration will inflate a heat shield six meters across and then deploy it from a Centaur upper stage for a reentry test. Credit: NASA WASHINGTON — A payload hitching a ...

Washington: The US space agency is planning to test inflatable spacecraft technology for future missions to Red Planet. For this, NASA scientists are considering to use a blow-up heat shield which ...

Your spacecraft is falling from the skies at an initial speed of Mach 25. Your reentry heat shield, that has to survive a 7,800 degrees Celsius (14,072° F) plasma shock, is a finely tuned hi-tech ...

A large inflatable heat shield developed by NASA’s Space Technology Program has successfully survived a trip through Earth’s atmosphere while travelling at hypersonic speeds up to 7,600 mph. The ...

When you think of the blistering, brutal re-entry temperatures generated by plowing through Earth’s atmosphere, using fabric doesn’t come quickly to mind. But NASA is set to try some fabric out this ...

When you think of the blistering, brutal re-entry temperatures generated by plowing through Earth’s atmosphere, using fabric doesn’t come quickly to mind. But NASA is set to try some fabric out this ...