Patent — available for licensing
Flexible Phenolic Intermingled Carbon Ablators (PICA-Flex)
A NASA invention available to explore as a licensing opportunity.
About this technology
Overview
For the past three decades, phenolic impregnated carbon ablators (PICAs) have been the state of the art in ablative entry materials for heat shields for Mars and Earth sample return missions for entry conditions. Traditional rigid PICAs have very low density and highly efficient ablative capability to provide mass efficiency for these heating regimes. Non-rigid variants of PICA provide additional benefits beyond traditional rigid PICA, offering reduced density variants with increased strain to failure. However, all three materials require lengthy infusion processes involving complex equipment and infrastructure, yield toxic byproducts, and the rigid thermal protection system (TPS) produced requires complex and costly integration processes. NASA Ames has developed a family of materials called Materials Engineered for Re-entry using Innovative Needling Operations (MERINO), a flexible PICA material based on felting and fiber intermingling techniques that can create a blanket of thermal protection material to install onto spacecraft.