NASA Installs Heat Shield on Private Spacecraft for Journey to Hunt Life on Venus

A company that's slated to launch the world's first-ever private mission to Venus is getting ready for the planet's super-hot temperatures with some help from NASA. The space agency boasted in a press release that it's working with Rocket Lab, a California-based aerospace manufacturer, to apply a heat shield onto the small space capsule that's scheduled to launch next summer. Along with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rocket Lab has since 2021 been planning its Venus Life Finder mission that will, as the name suggests, check for signs of life amid the cloudtops of the second planet from the Sun. To prepare the 50-pound probe — which will also track weather patterns on the uber-acidic world — for the intense heat of our Solar System's hottest planet, NASA is applying a brown woven material that can protect crafts from temperatures up to 4,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Known as the Heatshield for Extreme Entry Environment Technology, or "HEEET" for short, the rugged spacecraft ou ... Read full article.