The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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The design of a re-entry vehicle and the analysis of its performance are extremely challenging tasks. The difficulties increase when the understanding of its transient behaviour is sought and grow even further if this transient is affected by uncontrolled phenomena such as the shape change caused by the ablation of the thermal protection material used as heat shield. An activity with the Von Karman Institute, Belgium activity and TDE aimed to join numerical, experimental and modelling expertise to shed light on the possible impact of the ablation-driven shape change of the heat shield on the capsule aerodynamic behaviour. The obtained results suggest that the developed techniques and the acquired knowledge may be used in the future to support more standard design approaches for re-entry missions. In addition, it is believed that the synergistic use of experimental, theoretical and numerical techniques used by the team represents a valuable example of how to properly tackle a complex multi-physical problem as the atmospheric entry. More about this activity is available in the TDE Highlights brochure 2022.
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