2025 ablation workshop
The Ablation Workshop
The Ablation Workshop is an international conference dedicated to research on ablation, pyrolysis, and materials subjected to stress during the atmospheric reentry of spacecraft. It generally takes place annually (due to the COVID crisis, there were only two events between 2020 and 2024).
This event provides a unique meeting place for the integration and advancement of a multidisciplinary research community composed of scientists and engineers working on aerothermodynamic ablation. This research community includes members representing government agencies (such as NASA), the private sector, and academic institutions from around the world.
Each edition gathers over 100 participants across these institutions from all over the world. The primary objectives of the workshop are to:
- foster improved communication across national boundaries;
- expose the aerothermodynamic ablation modeling community to new ideas and techniques from adjacent disciplines;
- bring new experimental techniques to bear on the problem;
- discuss challenges faced in adapting existing techniques to address new applications.
The 2025 edition
The 15th edition of this conference, organized by the University of New Mexico (under the direction of Dr. Francisco Torres Herrador) and the University of Kentucky (Prof. Alexandre Martin and Prof. Savio J. Poovathingal), brought together 104 participants in Las Cruces (New Mexico, USA) from November 18 to 20, 2025.
Authors gave presentations in plenary sessions (there were no parallel sessions in this workshop), allowing for continuous collective discussion among participants. Time was also set aside for the numerous posters, allowing discussions to continue and deepen.
Three member organizations of the HyFAR-ARA association (ArianeGroup, CEA, and the University of Bordeaux) were represented by several of their engineers and scientists. Their presentations addressed:
- the probe of the Exomars Rosalin Franklin mission (G. Pinaud ArianeGroup : arc jet tests ont the thermal protection material, also member of the Scientific committee),
- the modeling of materials thermo-mechanical deformations during ablation.
Some of the HyFAR-ARA participants
Gregory Pinaud (ArianeGroup) during his presentation @ Ablation Workshop 2025
The workshop ended with a tour of SpacePort America, world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport. This FAA-licensed launch complex is situated on 18,000 acres adjacent to the U.S. Army White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico.
Get more information on the 15th workshop, among which the book of abstracts, on this page: https://ablation.engr.uky.edu.
The next workshop edition is programmed in September 2026, in Las Cruces again.
Ablation Workshop participants in front of Spaceport America building
