Tianyi Academy

During reentry, the spacecraft loses all contact with ground control for several minutes—this is known as "blackout." At this moment, the capsule is enveloped in gas heated to thousands of degrees, plunging into the atmosphere at near-meteor speeds. Temperature, duration, and the safety of those inside all depend on a thin layer of heat-shielding material.

In the past, rocket heat shields were single-use, discarded after each flight—just like the rockets themselves. But when rockets are designed for recovery and reuse, the rules change completely: heat shields can no longer be "use-and-throw." They must be inspectable, repairable, and capable of withstanding repeated flights. This marks a paradigm shift in both materials and philosophy.

For a reusable rocket's thermal protection system, is the coating on flight 1 identical to that on flight 10? While no visible differences may appear, performance can silently degrade. Understanding this "degradation curve" is a critical step in advancing reusable TPS from concept to engineering reality.

When hypersonics comes to mind, many people immediately think of "speed." But for materials engineers, the real nightmare isn't a brief spike in temperature—it's prolonged, continuous heating. A high peak is challenging; sustained high heat flux over time is the true challenge.

If re-entry heating comes from the outside, a rocket engine carries its own "hell" inside. The combustion chamber and nozzle walls must withstand gases at thousands of degrees, extreme pressure, and high velocity—making them some of the most thermally stressed components in aerospace engineering.

Space is both cold and hot. On the same satellite, the sunlit side can reach over 100°C, while the shaded side drops below -100°C. As it orbits Earth, these extremes switch every few dozen minutes. The toughest challenge in space isn't just heat—it's this relentless cycle of extreme temperature swings.

Thermal protection sounds like an aerospace specialty, but it's already quietly integrated into your daily life—such as in the power batteries of electric vehicles and energy storage stations. When a single cell goes into thermal runaway and catches fire, what stops it from igniting neighboring cells is a thermal management approach rooted in the same principles used in aerospace.

In a battery cabinet for an energy storage station, if a single cell goes out of control, the next few minutes are critical. The national standard GB 38031-2025 requirement of "no fire, no explosion" translates in engineering to a race against time driven by material performance.