Thermostructural Testing of PICA-D for NASA Planetary Science Missions

Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator (PICA) has been flown as the heatshield TPS material for many NASA planetary science missions. Due to a supply issue with the heritage Rayon fibers used in PICA fabrication, NASA started a project in 2017 to develop a sustainable replacement for PICA using a domestic fiber source. Lyocell was identified as an alternative to the Rayon-based precursor leading to the development and testing of the replacement material, PICA-D (Domestic). PICA-D’s processing steps and manufacturing specification largely adopt those used for heritage PICA. Extensive material property and arcjet testing showed that PICA-D performance met the specification requirements, and its properties and thermal performance were largely in family with heritage PICA. PICA-D was selected as the heatshield TPS material for two upcoming NASA planetary science missions, the Dragonfly mission to Titan and Mars Sample Retrieval
Lander (SRL).