NASA NTRS · 20260004314
Nasa’S Development of Merino - A New Family of Advanced, Low-Cost, Non-Woven Ablative Tps Materials
Abstract
The Mars Exploration Program (MEP) and NASAs Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) are investing in approaches to reduce the cost and increase the frequency of future Mars missions while also seeking to help emerging commercial space companies which have an immediate need to demonstrate their capability to return samples from space - at a fraction of the cost of a conventional NASA mission. Of particular interest and relevance to commercial space and low-cost Mars, is the work developing and advancing MERINO-LD, an ablative carbon/phenolic blanket that is ~75% faster to produce with an estimated ~75% reduction in cost when compared to rigid PICA or Conformal-PICA TPS.
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Matthew Gasch, Keith Peterson, Owen Nishioka, Joshua Monk, Donald Ellerby, Mairead Stackpoole, Dale Schreck, Lauren Abbott, Peter Marshall, Greg Gonzales, Kyle Hendrickson, Jose Chavez-garcia, Sebastian Colom, Peter Gage, Scott Pryne, Mike Horaz. Nasa’S Development of Merino - A New Family of Advanced, Low-Cost, Non-Woven Ablative Tps Materials. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20260004314
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