A European consortium led by Spanish mission and system integrator Deimos is collaborating to demonstrate the feasibility of developing an inflatable heatshield (IHS) for recovering rocket stages from space.
The innovative technology could also be adopted to protect precious cargo during re-entry and descent to Earth, and might eventually be used for missions landing payloads on Mars.
ICARUS (Inflatable Concept Aeroshell for the Recovery of a re-Usable launcher Stage) will be developed in three phases over four years, with a demonstrator test…