CRT was contracted by NASA's Jet Propusion Laboratory to assess the reliability of a ceramic aeroshell which will provide atmosphere entry protection for a Martian surface probe. This contract is part of the New Millennium Mars Microprobe mission, Deep Space 2, which is scheduled for launch in the later part of 1999.

In this application, CRT's WeibPar software was used to calculate Weibull parameters from a series of failure data provided by JPL. This information was coupled with information from a finite element analysis, in which the aeroshell system was analyzed subject to launch loads. The resulting reliability analysis using the NASA CARES program proved that the design of the aeroshell system was sufficient for the launch.