A special team at Ames Research Center has finally found two solutions to a problem that has concerned NASA for more than 2 years: The tiles designed to prevent the Space Shuttle from burning up are not up to the task of protecting Orion, the new spacecraft that will replace the Shuttle in just a few years.

Blasting through the atmosphere at 5 miles per second, the Space Shuttle gets pretty hot. But things will get even hotter for the its replacement, the Orion crew module. The crew module must return not just from Earth orbit, but from the moon. Objects returning from the moon enter the atmosphere at a much higher speed, experiencing temperatures 5-6 times what a re-entering orbiter does.

Inside NASA's Arc Jet at Ames Research Center.

There are only 3 ways you can get rid of the kinetic energy of a fast-moving object: carry fuel to slow down the craft, radiate the energy as heat and light, or burn it off in the form of ash (ablation).

That's where the Arc Jet comes in. It's the world's biggest space heater.

If you want to see what re-entry looks like up close, just peer through the glass into NASA's Arc Jet. Arc Jet is a chamber in which Ames Research Center recreates the heat experienced by object free-falling through Earth's atmosphere.

Inside the Arc Jet chamber, a sample of material is mounted directly in the path of an extremely hot blast of air. That blast is hotter than the surface of the sun. And it's the best thing we have on Earth to simulate what happens to a space craft on its way back down to Earth.

Richard Hart inside the world's biggest space heater.

Observing what happens to a material at those temperatures is critical to selecting a new heat shield material, according to James Reuther, Project Manager for the search.

"There's no other facility that we have anywhere in the world that could simulate those kinds of conditions," he says.

Not unlike the arc of light created inside an old-fashioned film projector, this arc is created by two rods, not close enough to touch, but close enough to create a spark in the gap between them. OK, it’s a little more than a spark. These rods comprise a superconducting copper alloy.

The Arc Jet is also the world’s biggest AC adapter, converting 50 MW of alternating current to DC for its experiments.