Advanced Ceramics Laboratory

SPACE TECHNOLOGY PROJECTS

RASTAS SPEAREarth-return capsule for the Marco Polo mission will encounter tremendous

heating on its return through the atmosphere at 45000km/hour

RASTAS SPEAR: Expected trajectory and heat flux of earth return capsule

RASTAS SPEAR Demonstrator Heat Shield - “Made in Greece”

RASTAS SPEAR Demonstrator Heat Shield with regolith sample sphere

RASTAS SPEAR: Plasma jet test at CIRA/Scirocco at 5MW/m2 and 4Mach jet

PULCHERNew small positioning rockets for satellites, probes and space stations

PULCHER: mini rockets based on the Bombardier Beetle!

PULCHER: Bipropellant rocket from the Apollo programme

Combustion chamber is the narrow grey part in the middle

The Pulcher rocket will be similar

PULCHER: Bipropellant rocket

Ceramic fibre-Ceramic matrix Combustion chamber

S. Schmidt et al, Acta Astronautica 55 (2004) 409 – 420

COSMIC SHIELD Protection against Galactic Cosmic Rays

COSMIC SHIELD: Particle shower in the atmosphere created by a Galactic Cosmic Rays

COSMIC SHIELD: All human missions will require shielding against Galactic Cosmic Rays

COSMIC SHIELD: Human bases require shielding against Galactic Cosmic Rays

COSMIC SHIELD: New nano-magnet composite material shield against Galactic Cosmic Rays

Anisotropic MNP’s

HDPE (nCH2) matrix (with

hydrides, not shown)

Incident high energy charged particles

HybridTPS A ceramic-ablator composite Thermal Protection System

SHS MgO + spinel + Phenolic ablator

Hybrid TPS