Conformal PICA TPS– Enabling Future Nasa Planetary Science Missions

Initial development of Conformal Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator (C-PICA) ablative TPS occurred under NASA’s Hypersonics
Project in the 2000’s and demonstrated very low through-the-thickness thermal conductivity compared to state-of-the-art Phenolic
Impregnated Carbon Ablator (PICA). PICA, which was first demonstrated on Stardust, has some inherent limitations that C-PICA
improves on, primarily strain to failure. More recently C-PICA has been further matured and a family of C-PICA materials are now
ready for consideration as an enabling technology for New Frontiers and other NASA missions. C-PICA has several improvements
compared to PICA including:
- Higher strain to failure and lower thermal conductivity (up to 55% less than PICA depending on C-PICA variant)
- CTE comparable to typical composite carrier structures and also suitable for metallic substructures given high strain to failure
- Temperature independent mechanical properties
- Suited for single piece (up to ~ 1.5m) or tiled configurations
- Larger tiles leading to reduced integration complexity compared to tiled PICA
- Reduced mass compared to PICA due to reduced thermal conductivity

C-PICA has been tested at heat fluxes ranging from 250-1850 W/cm^2, and shear pressures of 200Pa at 400W/cm^2 with excellent
performance. Expertise on manufacturing and integration of C-PICA reside at NASA, and NASA can transition the technology to
interested parties via technology transfer.