Abstract: With the development of modern hypersonic vehicles, the aero-heating environment generated from their high-speed atmosphere re-entry or long time near-space flight becomes diversified and complicated. The aero-heating distribution and evolution of vehicles generally have time and space multi-scale characteristics. This paper reviewed the progress in fields of mechanism and thermo-ablative modeling research of thermal protection materials, whose thermal environments, processing and micro-scale response were especially concerned. Aero-heating characteristic and the difficulty of thermo-ablative modeling for various vehicles were analysed. The characteristic of material and its the rmal response were summarized. The key issues need to focus of thermo-ablative modeling and analysis, and the typical application were proposed. Furthermore, some typical examples were demonstrated to introduce the computational methodology, optimized designs and experimental verifications of materials' high temperature physical-chemical properties. This study will be benefit to thermal protection designs of hypersonic vehicles, especially for future multi-functional ones.