Nasa in silcon valley | The science of heat shield

How does something that looks like a stack of orange inner tubes covered in a black tarp survive temperatures reaching 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit as it plunges through the atmosphere? An upcoming technology demonstration uses advanced materials to make a heat shield that's tougher than it looks.

Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD) technology has been in development for more than a decade. An inflatable heat shield, unlike traditional rigid heat shields, can be packed to a very small size and then deployed to a scale much larger than a rocket’s payload fairing. A demonstration of an inflatable heat shield, or aeroshell, Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID), is the next step in advancing this technology that could one day help land humans on Mars.