An open carbon-phenolic ablator for scientific exploration.

Space exploration missions rely on ablative heat shields for the thermal protection of spacecraft during atmospheric entry flights. While dedicated research is needed for future missions, the scientific community has limited access to ablative materials typically used in aerospace. In this paper, we report the development of the HEFDiG Ablation-Research Laboratory Experiment Material (HARLEM), a carbon-phenolic ablator designed to supply the need for ablative materials in laboratory experiments.

High frame rate emission spectroscopy for ablation tests in plasma wind tunnel.

This article describes a novel high frame rate emission spectroscopy setup developed for measurements in high enthalpy flow fields. The optical setup and the associated hardware arrangements are described in detail followed by test case data to demonstrate the capability of recording spectral images at 1 kHz frame rate. The new system is based on a classical Czerny-Turner spectrograph but with a particular setup for high frame rate detection using a Generation II intensifier coupled with a high-speed camera.