COMET: COolant MEthod for Extreme Temperatures

Hypersonic vehicles experience intense aerodynamic heating which leads to a high heat flux into the vehicle and the overheating of electronics. Failure of the electronics can lead to performance limitations, mission failure, and vehicle loss. Lynntech proposes to develop an internally-sublimating thermal protection system using model-based design techniques and extensive material testing. Lynntech will leverage its experience with material development and testing to take this concept from prototype to flight-ready. Phase I will focus on material selection, housing design, and determining the limits to feasibility. High temperature furnace testing will be performed on the materials to determine optimal lightweight performers and computational modeling (MS&A) will be utilized for rapid design of the prototype. Phase II will include fabrication of the prototype seal and hypersonic wind tunnel testing to validate the expected performance. The new thermal protection system could also be used to aid in spacecraft atmospheric re-entry.