Heat Shield Sample, Mercury MA-7

A heat shield protected the one-person Mercury spacecraft against the enormous heat of reentry into the atmosphere beginning at a velocity of more than 27,500 kilometers (17,000 miles) per hour. Like those of other early human spacecraft, Mercury's heat shield derived from ballistic-missile warhead technology. The dish-shaped shield created a shock wave in the atmosphere that held off most of the heat. The rest dissipated by ablation--charring and evaporation of the shield's surface. Ablative heat shields are not reusable.

This heat shield is a sample from Scott Carpenter's "Aurora 7" spacecraft. An Atlas launch vehicle launched Carpenter on a three-orbit mission called Mercury-Atlas 7 (MA-7) on May 24, 1962, the second U.S. manned orbital flight. The NASA Johnson Space Center gave this sample to the Smithsonian in 1978.