- Science
- Global
Planning Titan entry? New lab tests flag nitrogen-driven heat shield debris risks
- March 16, 2026 at 10:56 AM
- 6 views
Heat shields are designed to protect the surface and cargo of a spacecraft as it enters an atmosphere. Aerospace engineers in The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign recently observed a violently destructive difference in how heat shields function in atmospheres like Earth that contain oxygen versus nitrogen-rich atmospheres such as Venus and Titan, one of Saturn's moons.
Originally published at Phys.org