heat shield
nounDefinition of heat shield
: a barrier of ablative material to protect a space capsule from heat on its entry into an atmosphere
Examples of heat shield in a Sentence
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During the first phase, InSight will free-fall through the atmosphere using a heat shield for protection as the surrounding air slams into the spacecraft, heating it up to temperatures of 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit. — Loren Grush, The Verge, "Watch NASA engineers track the harrowing landing of a spacecraft on Mars today," 26 Nov. 2018 Additionally, specialized software on the spacecraft will keep the heat shield pointing in the right direction. — James Rogers, Fox News, "Weird solar science: How NASA's Parker probe will dive through the Sun's atmosphere," 10 Aug. 2018 In addition to the parachute system, the landing module will be fitted with an aero-braking heat shield, a damping system and breaking thrusters, which will eventually place the module onto the surface. — Tereza Pultarova, Space.com, "The Largest Parachute Ever Built for Mars Aces Its First Test," 16 May 2018 The lander descends, equipped with a heat shield that’s pointed downward. — Loren Grush, The Verge, "NASA’s InSight lander has just six and a half minutes to land on Mars in one piece," 21 Nov. 2018 Pointed directly at the Sun, the SPC is mounted outside the spacecraft’s heat shield and is also built from niobium C-103. — James Rogers, Fox News, "NASA's Parker Solar Probe gets closer to 'touching the Sun'," 6 Sep. 2018 Technicians recently bolted the heat shield onto the Orion spacecraft at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, NASA officials said in a statement. — Elizabeth Howell, Space.com, "NASA's Orion Spacecraft Gets Heat Shield for Daring Test Flight to the Moon," 21 Aug. 2018 And now Kavanaugh is the heat shield for Zuckerberg because this would have been huge news had 20 million people not tuned in to find out how much Kavanaugh likes beer. — Eric Johnson, Recode, "Tesla’s board is too weak to stop its CEO Elon Musk from tweeting," 5 Oct. 2018 UP Aerospace launched its SpaceLoft suborbital rocket on Wednesday, allowing NASA to deploy a new umbrella-like heat shield at an altitude between 100 and 120km. — Eric Berger, Ars Technica, "Rocket Report: Japanese spaceplane, GEO downturn, Block 5 results good," 14 Sep. 2018These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'heat shield.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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