Nonintrusive Fiber Interferometer for TPS Recession

Motivation

• Thermal protection systems (TPS) are critical components of reentry vehicle.
• Key difficulty is predicting and diagnosing new TPS performance

Approach

• Fiber Interferometer system would be used to permit simultaneous interferometric measurement of surface recession rates and plasma bow shock emission spectra for an ablative TPS.

Results

• Currently in the Phase I effort