Pico Reentry Probes: Partnership Pushes Evolution

NASA needs a small reentry probes to improve reliability and safety of crewed vehicles and aid in planetary exploration. The Air Force needs small reentry probes to help reduce the hazard of reentering debris. The community needs a small, survivable device to act as a black box in case of a reentry accident. Universities and commercial companies need an inexpensive way to conduct tests of new materials, to gather data in the tough reentry environment, and possibly to return small experiments from space. Several government and private entities are pooling their resources and experiences to explore and develop a new family of reentry vehicles that take advantage of emerging pico and nano technologies and commercial communications capabilities. These new devices will weigh on the order of 1 to 10 kilograms, will be stand-alone, and will require minimal ground support during their missions—all characteristics leading to major cost savings and presenting the opportunity to recover data of interest to many communities. This paper gives an overview of this new reentry vehicle family, its potential uses, and discusses how partnerships have been critical to its evolution.