{"id":268517,"date":"2026-02-05T06:30:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T06:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/268517\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T06:30:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T06:30:12","slug":"nasa-heat-shield-tech-contributes-to-americas-space-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/268517\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA Heat Shield Tech Contributes to America\u2019s Space Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This Jan. 29, 2026, photo captures the streak the Varda Space Industries W-5 capsule made while returning to Earth. The capsule uses a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/directorates\/stmd\/nasa-heat-shield-technology-enables-space-industry-growth\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">protective heat shield\u00a0Varda produced made of cutting-edge material it licensed from NASA<\/a>. The material, known as C-PICA (Conformal Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator), provides a stronger, less expensive, and more efficient thermal protection coating to capsules, allowing them \u2013 and their valuable contents \u2013 to return to Earth safely.<\/p>\n<p>Developed at NASA\u2019s Ames Research Center in California\u2019s Silicon Valley, C-PICA\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/general\/nasa-helps-emerging-space-companies-take-the-heat\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">sets the standard<\/a>\u00a0for heat shields, reflecting the decades of expertise that NASA brings to designing, developing, and testing innovative thermal protection materials. This flight test of Varda-produced C-PICA was supported by NASA\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/stmd-flight-opportunities\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Flight Opportunities<\/a>\u00a0program.<\/p>\n<p>Image credit: Varda Space Industries\/William Godward<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This Jan. 29, 2026, photo captures the streak the Varda Space Industries W-5 capsule made while returning to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-268517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}