There are four basic thermal materials used on the space shuttle Columbia, Reinforced-Carbon-Carbon (RCC), Low- and High Temperature Reusable Surface Insulation tiles (LRSI and HRSI, respectively), and Felt Reusable Surface Insulation (FRSI) blanket 1 . The purpose of this work was to obtain the mechanical behavior of the materials involved in the modeling of the foam impact scenario for the shuttle accident investigation. Experiments were designed to provide the modeling parameters of HRSI tiles and RCC as well as to give insight into the failure phenomena under different loading conditions. For each material the results are presented as a function of orientation and applied strain rate. The effect of aging on the RCC material properties is also discussed.