heat shield

1. 1.

   a protective covering that protects a spacecraft from overheating on reentry

   Broaderprotective covering

   Part ofspacecraft

   Partsnose cone

Questions about heat shield

What does heat shield mean?

heat shield means "a protective covering that protects a spacecraft from overheating on reentry".

Is heat shield a common word?

heat shield is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.