Page 4 - Spec Tech Vol 1 Issue 08
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NASA's inflatable flying saucer aces Mars
heat shield reentry test
Image Credit: NASA
NASA is a step closer to landing even larger km) in altitude, marking the beginning of the
vehicles on Mars. re-entry. Telemetry was briefly lost as the
demonstrator made its way back to Earth,
Following being launched aboard the last
United Launch Alliance Atlas V but everything turned out well in the end.
rocket blastoff from the West Coast on The inflatable technology splashed down
Wednesday (Nov. 10), an inflatable heat just 5 miles (8 km) from the Kahana II
shield technology demonstrator recovery vessel, allowing for an easy
called LOFTID appeared to make a flawless retrieval, and LOFTID jettisoned its flight
journey to space and back. If that is indeed recorder as planned for data collection.
the case, this mission marks a keystone "This is a great, great opportunity to get
moment in NASA's long journey to flight data and see how it actually
eventually bring humans to Mars.
performed," Greg Swanson, LOFTID
Splashdown of the Low-Earth Orbit Flight instrumentation lead at NASA's Ames
Test of an Inflatable Decelerator was nose Research Center, said during the same
down, which was exactly as planned. It even livestream. "We know it performed well
inflated in the ocean, roughly 500 miles (800 enough to make it great," he added of the
km) away from Hawaii — a bonus milestone mission.
for the engineering team.
The $93 million LOFTID, which launched
"This is one of the most critical technologies alongside the Joint Polar Satellite System-2
that we're establishing right now with this (JPSS-2), is an expandable aeroshell
mission, and also with that first successful designed to slow a spacecraft's entry
orbital flight and recovery," Jim Reuter, through the Martian sky and reduce the
NASA's associate administrator for amount of heat created by atmospheric
the space technology mission directorate, friction. NASA says the tech represents one
said during the NASA Television livestream solution to landing in the ultra-thin Martian
just after the splashdown. atmosphere, which makes landings
especially delicate because spacecraft
After deployment in space, NASA visually
confirmed via the video livestream the full encounter only a fraction of drag compared
inflation of LOFTID at about 78 miles (125 to Earth's atmosphere.
Space Explorer 2022 4
