Emission Spectroscopic Boundary Layer Investigation during Ablative Material Testing in Plasmatron.

Ablative Thermal Protection Systems (TPS) allowed the first humans to safely return to Earth from the moon and are still considered as the only solution for future high-speed reentry missions. But despite the advancements made since Apollo, heat flux prediction remains an imperfect science and engineers resort to safety factors to determine the TPS thickness. This goes at the expense of embarked payload, hampering, for example, sample return missions.