Spacecraft heat shield study in the DIII-D tokamak
We report a new experimental platform developed at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility to investigate carbon ablation and spallation under extreme heat fluxes relevant to fusion plasma-facing components and high-enthalpy atmospheric entry. Carbon samples were exposed to parallel heat fluxes of $30$--$40~\mathrm{MW\,m^{-2}}$ in the scrape-off layer using two complementary approaches: stationary carbon rods inserted near the divertor strike point and slow-launch carbon pellets injected vertically into the edge and core plasma. Pellets penetrating the core experienced heat fluxes approximately an order of magnitude higher. The conditions reproduce key aspects of the shock-layer environment encountered by the Galileo probe during entry into Jupiter's atmosphere. Fast visible imaging, divertor spectroscopy, infrared thermography, CO$_2$ interferometry, and post-exposure profilometry provided measurements of ablation rates, surface recession, and temperature evolution. Measured mass-loss rates of $(1$--$3)\times10^{-2}~\mathrm{g\,cm^{-2}\,s^{-1}}$ agree with semi-empirical aerospace ablation models, while wedge-shaped rods exhibited greater ablation than cylindrical and concave samples. UEDGE-DUSTT simulations incorporating parallel plasma flows, ${\bf j}\times{\bf B}$ forces, and ablation-cloud shielding reproduce the measured pellet trajectories and ablation timescales. These results establish tokamak plasma as a high-heat-flux environment for validating carbon ablation models and studying material response and impurity dynamics in reactor-relevant divertor plasmas.