12 small capsules on a Cygnus cargo ship are testing NASA’s next-generation heat shields

A fleet of 12 small, experimental capsules rode to the International Space Station inside Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL cargo ship and are now set to test how heat shield materials survive atmospheric entry. NASA’s Ames Research Center described the experiment, called KREPE-3, in a release dated Oct. 9, 2026. The flight is Northrop Grumman’s 24th cargo resupply mission for NASA, designated NG-24 by the company.

KREPE stands for Kentucky Reentry Probe Experiment, the third in a series of low-cost missions that use the end of a cargo spacecraft’s life to collect flight data. Astronauts packed the Cygnus with waste and activated the capsules before it left the station.

Twelve capsules, one disposal flight

The capsules were designed by University of Kentucky students and carry sensors for temperature, pressure, motion, magnetic field and light. When the cargo vehicle breaks up harmlessly in the atmosphere, the capsules eject and record how each heat shield material performs, then use satellite links to send live data to researchers. According to the NASA release, the work is a collaboration among the university, the state of Kentucky, NASA’s EPSCoR program, several NASA centers and federal and commercial partners.

The count of 12 appears in the university’s own materials too. A send-off event listing from February 2026 says all 12 flight capsules would be on view before delivery to the station. Northrop Grumman’s mission page says the NG-24 Cygnus XL, named the S.S. Steven R. Nagel, launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 7:41 a.m. on April 11, 2026, and arrived at the station on April 13 with 11,000 pounds of cargo. It does not mention KREPE.

The NASA release does not give an undocking or re-entry date, and no flight results had been published when it appeared.

MERINO, printed shields and an umbrella

The capsules carry different designs. Two of them hold MERINO, a felt-like material of stitched carbon and phenolic fibers developed at Ames. NASA says it is more flexible, faster to make and cheaper than traditional materials, and a candidate for Mars missions. Keith Peterson, a materials engineer at Ames, called the approach “a smart way to get flight data on materials that are still in development,” and described it as hitching a ride on a vehicle that is already returning to Earth. The Cygnus breaks apart in the atmosphere at the end of its mission regardless, which is the event the capsules are built to ride along on and record.

Another capsule carries a 3D-printed shield from the Additive Manufacturing of Thermal Protective Systems project, developed at NASA Johnson and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. A ceramic tile similar to the material used on the space shuttle is included as a proven baseline. A dual-cone design called the Kentucky Instrumented Conical Hypersonic Experiment, with a tungsten tip and a MERINO-wrapped aft cone, is meant to check computer models against real flight data.

The most unusual entry is ADEPT, the Adaptable Deployable Entry and Placement Technology, an umbrella-shaped deployable shield that increases surface area to slow descent. At full scale, NASA says, it could fold to carry payloads larger than their launch rockets. Partner capsules test other materials as well, including a heat flux sensor from Germany’s University of Stuttgart.

A Titan-bound aeroshell on the same flight

One capsule is a Dragonfly-style aeroshell, covered in Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator, a material developed at Ames that previously flew on Stardust, Mars Science Laboratory and Mars 2020. It tests the stability of the design intended for NASA’s Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan. NASA’s Dragonfly page lists the rotorcraft’s launch as no earlier than July 2028, with arrival in late 2034, and names Elizabeth Turtle of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory as principal investigator.

The student side of the project was visible months earlier. In February, LEX 18 reported that mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Alexandre Martin guides the students, including PhD student Alexander Barrera and Eric Adams, who handles the safety and mechanical side. The capsules contain circuit boards that record data, and the February report said astronauts on the station would pull a pin to start data recording, with the capsules making a splash landing in the ocean on return. The February report also said the capsules would spend six to seven months at the station before the return trip.

David Berger, EPSCoR program manager at NASA Headquarters, called KREPE-3 “a great example of the goals of NASA’s EPSCoR program,” which he described as supporting the next generation of scientists and engineers. The result to look for is the flight data itself: temperature and pressure traces from 12 capsules, matched against what each shield material was predicted to do.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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