Ablative heatshield

An ablative heatshield was designed to allow an individual to survive re-entry into a planet's atmosphere from orbit. During the Galactic Civil War, a bounty hunter used an ablative heatshield and a parachute to jump from orbit to the surface of the planet Dantooine to rescue a child. Stormtroopers also employed ablative heatshields to perform orbital drops, and larger shields were mounted on Warlord Dropships to enable the craft to survive high speed atmospheric re-entry. Ablative sheathes were fitted on the noses of the T-65 X-wing starfighters of Rogue Squadron before the Second Battle of Borleias in order to make them look like meteorites burning up on entry into Borleias's atmosphere. Members of Wraith Squadron and the Jedi Order utilized individual atmospheric intrusion pods mounted with ablative heatshields during their infiltration of Coruscant via atmospheric insertion during the Yuuzhan Vong War in 27 ABY.

Text and facts from the “Ablative heatshield” article on Wookieepedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Modified for this site.