During Titan atmosphere entry, the heat shield of a planetary exploration vehicle experiences high radiative heat loads. In these conditions, owing to the composition of Titan's atmosphere, the radiative heat flux can be comparable to or greater than the convective heat flux. Therefore, proper design of the heat shield necessitates a good knowledge of the radiative properties of the high temperature gas present in the shock layer. Few experimental data are available on this problem. We present in this study measurements aimed at producing experimental data representative of Titan entry conditions.

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The paper presents an overview of the aerothermal plasma simulation facilities in use at the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics and the main research topics that have been followed during 10 years of work in the field. Both numerical simulation of plasma flows and experimental techniques are addressed, with an emphasis of the methodology which allows to relate measurements in the facilities to flight conditions of a space vehicle (re-)entering a planetary atmosphere.

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