Entry Heating and Thermal Protection

The era of space exploration and utilization that we are witnessing today could not have become reality without a host of evolutionary and even revolutionary advances in many technical areas. Thermophysics is certainly no exception. In fact, the interdisciplinary field of thermophysics plays a significant role in the life cycle of all space missions from launch, through operation in the space environment to entry into the atmosphere of Earth or one of Earth's planetary neighbors. This volume presents a collection of papers originally presented at either the AIAA 17th Aerospace Sciences Meeting or the AIAA 14th Thermophysics Meeting dealing with two of the most difficult and dissimilar problems of entry heating and thermal protection yet to be encountered.

This book provides a documentation of progress in entry heating and thermal protection relating to two very challenging and very dissimilar applications: the Galileo probe and the Space Shuttle. It is hoped that it will provide both a useful reference for those working in the field and as a guide and inspiration to those who, in the future, will be faced with other challenges of similar difficulty.