News tagged with aeroshell

An aeroshell is a rigid heat-shielded shell that protects a vehicle from pressure and heat created by drag during atmospheric entry (see blunt body theory), slows it down during entry, and may protect it from debris during spaceflight. The back shell carries the load being delivered, along with important components such as a parachute, rocket engines, and monitoring electronics like an inertial measurement unit that monitors the orientation of the shell during parachute-slowed descent.

Aeroshells are a key component of interplanetary space missions. They were used in the Apollo program to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s, the 1975 Viking program to Mars, the 1997 Mars Pathfinder mission, the 2003 Mars Exploration Rover missions, the 2007 Mars Phoenix mission, and are scheduled for use in the Mars Science Laboratory mission in late 2011.