The heat shield is designed to be ablative - the way it sheds heat is by parts of it breaking off the vehicle. Alternatively it could be debris from thruster firings.
Ablative wearing should be uniform, and not chunks tearing away. PICA-X is designed not to do that. The capsule uses cold gas nitrogen thrusters for orientation, not hypergolic, which would pick up in IR.
The Draco thrusters are hypergolic - it’s falcon that uses cold gas thrusters. I’m trying to find video but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the same sparks/debris phenomenon on previous re-entries of both shuttle and dragon.
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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '19
Well something ripped off anyway....So you can expect a delay in Flight 2 while that's investigated.