Recent NASA space missions, such as the Stardust sample return capsule and Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) have used PICA as the heat shield material . A similar heat shield material, PICA-X, is used on Space-X's Dragon Capsule , and a PICA-type heat shield was used for the Hayabusa sample return mission of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) . The European Space Agency (ESA) has developed its own variant of PICA, known as ASTERM .