One of the most challenging problems of modern engineering is undoubtedly the prediction of hypersonic flows around space vehicles in reentry conditions. Indeed, the difficulties are numerous: first of all, these flows are very difficult to model, since very complex physical and chemical phenomena take place during the reentry phase; secondly, temperature, velocity and enthalpy are very high and densities are very low, making the reentry process very difficult to reproduce in ground-based experiments. The past three decades have seen important efforts in computational fluid dynam ics relying...