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Case Studies
/ Amorim P50 Protects the Survival Capsule of ESA’s DRACO Reentry Mission

ESA's DRACO Reentry Mission

Amorim P50 Protects the Survival Capsule of ESA’s DRACO Reentry Mission

Amorim P50 cork-based thermal protection material was selected for the heat shield of the survival capsule aboard DRACO, a European Space Agency (ESA) mission designed to collect critical data as a spacecraft breaks apart during atmospheric reentry. Case Studies

The Solution: An Amorim P50 Cork-Based Heat Shield

The von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics (VKI) selected Amorim P50 for the heat shield of DRACO’s survival capsule.

P50 is a lightweight, cork-based ablative thermal protection material developed by Amorim Cork Solutions for demanding aerospace environments.

During atmospheric reentry, a spacecraft is exposed to severe aerothermal conditions. The heat shield provides a protective barrier between this environment and the systems contained within the capsule.

For DRACO, this protection has a particularly important purpose: helping protect the capsule carrying the scientific data that gives the mission its value. The project builds on approximately 15 years of collaboration between Amorim and VKI in aerothermodynamics and thermal protection.

P50 had already been selected by VKI for QARMAN – QubeSat for Aerothermodynamic Research and Measurements on AblatioN, an experimental spacecraft developed to collect aerothermodynamic data during atmospheric reentry. DRACO represents the next chapter in this long-standing technical collaboration.

The Challenge: Protecting What Must Survive

DRACO, short for Destructive Reentry Assessment Container Object, presents an unusual aerospace engineering challenge.

Scheduled for launch in 2027, the ESA mission is designed to deliberately reenter Earth’s atmosphere and break apart, allowing researchers to study what happens to a spacecraft during atmospheric reentry under real flight conditions.

Around 200 sensors and four cameras distributed throughout the spacecraft will record the thermal, mechanical and structural processes involved in its destruction.

But while DRACO itself is designed to break apart, its most important scientific data must survive.

Before the spacecraft is destroyed, critical information collected by its instruments will be transferred to a 40 cm survival capsule. The capsule must withstand the demanding conditions of atmospheric reentry long enough to preserve the data and subsequently transmit it to Earth.

This requirement created a critical need for an effective thermal protection system (TPS).