Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator (PICA) is a frequently employed thermal protection system (TPS) material in the space flight community. First flown on the forebody of Stardust, which re-entered in January of 2006, PICA has been the go-to material system for each successive Martian rover mission. This legacy continues with PICA domestic (PICA-D) baselined for the Mars Sample Retrieval Lander (SRL) and Dragon-fly, a mission to Titan’s surface. In mission planning, the capability of a TPS material system is restricted to environments that are proven through ground testing or flight missions. De-spite the range of destinations from Earth return to Mars entry to Saturn moons, PICA’s demonstrated capability currently covers heating rates less than 1800 W/cm2 and surface pressures less than 150 kPa [1]. These recognized limitations prevent PICA for consideration in direct entry applications at Venus, the outer planets, and high mass return missions at Earth, thus requiring selecting higher density materials [2].


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    Title :

    Heat Flux and Pressure Envelope Expansion Tests of Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator (PICA)


    Contributors:
    J. D. Williams (author) / B. J. Libben (author) / J. D. Morgan (author) / T. Gökçen (author)

    Conference:

    20th International Planetary Probe Workshop (IPPW 2023) ; 2023 ; Marseille, FR


    Type of media :

    Miscellaneous


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English




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