University of Kentucky student studies heat shield application.
The University of Kentucky studies heat shields, aiming to further improve space technology.
University of Kentucky students gather at NASA.
University of Kentucky’s space capsules await to be sent into flight.
University of Kentucky student studies heat shield application.
PADUCAH — All eyes were on the sky in April when the world anxiously waited for the Artemis II splashdown. Until the re-entry was finally confirmed to be a success, concerns about the capsule’s heat shield circulated — an issue during the previous Artemis I mission that Kentucky researchers helped NASA resolve.
Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Kentucky, Savio Poovathingal, explained Tuesday that both UK’s Lexington and Paducah campuses — alongside Murray State’s Paducah campus — worked to improve an unexpected problem with the Artemis I Orion capsule.
“We do a lot of work on heat shield modeling, testing flying space capsules and so on,” Poovathingal said. “We are pretty much in the heat shield research community. We’re leaders in that world.”
During the Artemis I test flight in 2022, significant pressure built up in the Orion heat shield and caused cracking, causing charred material to break off in several places.
“It was an uncrewed mission — there were some issues with the heat shield during the re-entry process, so there was a massive effort at NASA to understand the issues,” said Poovathingal.
NASA began an investigation into the possible causes of the unexpected damage as soon as it was discovered, and researchers at UK were among those tasked to perform evaluations.
The University of Kentucky studies heat shields, aiming to further improve space technology.
“We have some unique capabilities at UK to understand material structure and make measurements about the material,” he said. “We can combine our experimental techniques and imaging capabilities to understand kind of what happened.”
Poovathingal explained that UK researchers focused on the shield’s structure to find the root cause of the cracking, analyzing samples sent to them by NASA. He added that UK even has a program that tests heat shields by sending them into space and bringing them back into Earth’s atmosphere at high velocities.
“It’s called KRUPS — which stands for Kentucky Reentry Universal Payload System,” he said. “These are miniature small capsules that we fly from the space station. They actually go up to the space station, and they come down at like re-entry velocities where we can test different heat shields.”
Poovathingal added that NASA makes the various heat shields that the KRUPS program at UK tests.
“We are the only university in the world that has this flight program that has successfully done it. We’ve done it twice,” he said. “The first one was in 2021, where we had three capsules that flew, came back (and) re-entered back to the earth’s atmosphere. The second flight was in 2024 when we had five capsules come down.”
He said that KRUPS sent 12 capsules to the space station in April, and they will return in October for the researchers to study.
“UK has had a rich history of aerospace research for almost two decades now. A lot of faculty do research in aerospace-related fields, but the program itself — the aerospace program — started about five years ago,” he said.
University of Kentucky students gather at NASA.
Poovathingal added that UK is the only university in the state that offers an aerospace engineering degree, with both undergraduate and graduate programs available.
“There are other universities — like Murray offers like aerospace certificate type programs — but the true aerospace engineering is only at UK,” he said.
However, he explained that both UK’s Paducah campus and Murray State University also offer similar aerospace education to advance space travel.
“UK Paducah actually has a lot of aerospace work as well,” Poovathingal said. “Faculty Jack Maddox there does a lot of research in heat shields as well, and he has some unique tools where he can make some unique measurements that nobody else can make in the country. He has a project where he can shine high-temperature lasers on materials to understand their behavior — and that is becoming increasingly important for reusables for commercial space.”
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering John Maddox said UK’s Paducah campus, like in Lexington, focuses on the reentry process of space capsules. It also performs local experimental NASA insulation testing.
Maddox said that “science is always chasing a little bit behind engineering,” and he explained that coming up with new technology requires balancing structural survival with structural optimization. The shell needs to withstand atmospheric gases, but it cannot be too weighed down.
University of Kentucky’s space capsules await to be sent into flight.
In addition, he said UK’s Paducah campus participates in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics group and recently ranked third in the world for AIAA’s plane building competition. Middle and high school students can also participate in UK’s rocket club in Paducah.
As for Murray State’s Paducah campus, one of Poovathingal’s former students — Tyler Stoffel — now serves as an assistant professor at the School of Engineering. Stoffel said he additionally sits as the principal research engineer for Poovathingal’s Computational Thermophysics and Fluids Laboratory.
While he was a PhD student, Stoffel said he participated in a NASA internship where he worked with and analyzed space capsules.
“We were analyzing data from the Mars 2020 project,” Stoffel said. “I was part of a team analyzing data that the spacecraft had sent back to Earth at that time — data from outer space, as the space capsule approached Mars.”
Stoffel said that NASA funds many of the college’s projects, including the recent heat shield analyses for the Artemis mission.
“That was pretty important — that they sent that unmanned mission, the capsule came back, and it turns out that the heat shield was damaged in a way that they didn’t expect. That was right up our alley,” Stoffel said.
He explained that Murray State had the tools and methods to study the specific root cause of the Artemis I heat shield damage, as it is something the program already studies extensively.
“It appeared to be a porosity-related issue, and that’s exactly the type of thing that we studied together — University of Kentucky, several groups over there, as well as more recently, me over at Murray State University,” said Stoffel. “We study issues like that.”
Stoffel added that one of the college’s biggest funders is NASA Kentucky.
“Murray State University has a growing research program,” he said. “We have a broad range of programs, from your classic engineering — which is what I work in — to engineering technology and applied engineering, design engineering. But the classic engineering is really where research is focused, and we’re trying to grow that right now.”
All three engineers agreed that the aerospace programs — from Lexington to Paducah and Murray — played a key role in ensuring the safety of the Artemis II astronauts. Moreover, they stressed the job opportunities that Kentucky engineers have been given, including careers at NASA or more local jobs in Calvert City.
“The aerospace industry right now is really growing rapidly, so there’s a lot of job opportunities in this industry. Coming to UK, Lexington or Paducah gives people the opportunity to really get into this industry,” said Poovathingal.
Maddox said that being able to train students locally, like at UK’s Paducah campus, helps improve Kentucky aerospace engineer retention rate. Stoffel similarly said the local interest — such as the DOE site in Paducah — will offer upcoming opportunities for engineering graduates.
NASA plans to target 2028 for the next lunar landing — putting astronauts back on the moon for the first time since 1972 — as part of the Artemis IV mission. In the meantime, local engineers at Murray State and UK will continue to research and improve future space technology.
Currently in Paducah
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