Scientists Develop Test Setup For New Way To Survive Reentry

Spacecraft famously have small bits of them disintegrate on reentry. That’s by design, as it is one of the easiest solutions to absorbing the incredible amounts of energy they experience. However, it also results in long turn around times while these heat shields are repaired, and the shields themselves act as “dead weight” limiting payload capacity. With the increased focus on reusable rockets, and the emphasis on payload capacity, engineers have been looking for alternative solutions to the reentry problem - and the one of the most promising is known as magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) braking. A new paper from researchers at the Tokyo Metropolitan University describes a new test setup that should help designers of these advanced braking systems truly capture what their system is doing upon reentry.