The Orion Heat Shield is the largest ablative Heat Shield ever built. While there are no moving parts, the Heat Shield is one of the most complex design problems on Orion and provides numerous opportunities to learn about the design and certification of complex systems by large, distributed teams. Technical challenges such as cracking, mass reduction, complex manufacturing, and the inability to test at scale interact with programmatic challenges of budget, schedule, and team dynamics. Several specific experiences are presented, including cracks in the EFT-1 Heat Shield, post-flight analysis of the only recovered ablative system publicly available, and the evolution of a new design for future missions.
The Space Engineering Seminar Series, hosted by the Department of Aeronautics, are a series of talks by internationally renowned academics covering a broad range of topics on the theme of spacecraft engineering.