After a successful test launch in early March of the unmanned Crew Dragon spacecraft, its docking with the International Space Station (ISS) and return to Earth, SpaceX has come to grips with its other major project: the Starship interplanetary spacecraft.
In the near future, the company is expected to begin test flights of the Starship prototype to an altitude of up to 5 km to practice the takeoff and landing of the spacecraft. But before that, Elon Musk posted a short video on Twitter, giving anyone interested in the interplanetary project a look at the hexagonal heat shield tiles that will ultimately protect the ship from significant temperature rises.
Musk explained that the hottest parts of the heat shield during the test, glowing white, reached a maximum temperature of about 1650 kelvins (about 1377 Β° C). According to the SpaceX CEO, this coating is enough to withstand extreme temperatures when overcoming the dense layers of the Earth's atmosphere during the descent of the ship to Earth, although this figure is slightly less than the temperature that NASA's Space Shuttle space shuttles could withstand without consequences (about 1500 Β° C).
The hottest sections of the heat shield will have a "transpiration cooling" system with external microscopic pores that allow the refrigerant (water or methane) to flow out and cool the outer surface. This will help minimize damage to the heat shield and ensure that Starship can quickly return to service shortly after completion of the flight. To do this, it will be enough just to fill the reservoir of the heat shield.
βTranspirational cooling will be added wherever we see shield erosion,β Musk wrote. - Starship should be ready to fly again immediately after landing. Zero repair.
Source: 3dnews.ru