NASA has successfully tested a heat shield for flights to Mars, which resembles an inflatable flying saucer. The LOFTID device flew to space and back on Nov. 10, it reports space. com.
The flying saucer crashed safely into the Pacific Ocean.
The splashdown during flight tests of an inflatable moderator in low Earth orbit was carried out upside down as planned. It was even inflated in the ocean, some 800km off Hawaii, another achievement for the engineering team.
“It’s one of the most important technologies we’re deploying right now with this mission and with this successful first orbital flight and recovery,” said Jim Reuter, NASA associate administrator, mission director for space technology.
Following space deployment, the agency visually confirmed LOFTID’s full inflation live at an altitude of approximately 125km. This marked the beginning of re-entry into the atmosphere. Telemetry was briefly lost when the demonstrator returned to Earth, but it all worked out in the end.
Note that the inflatable technology crashed just eight kilometers from the Kahana II rescue ship, which made it easy to extract. So LOFTID threw out its flight recorder, as expected, to collect data.
“This is a great, great opportunity to get data about the flight and see how it actually works. We know it worked well enough to make it great,” the agency said.
It is worth noting that the cost of LOFTID is 93 million dollars. It was launched together with the Joint Polar Satellite System-2 (JPSS-2). The craft is an expandable aerodynamic shell designed to slow the spacecraft’s entry into the Martian sky and reduce the amount of heat generated by atmospheric friction.
NASA says this technology is one of the solutions for landing in the ultrathin Martian atmosphere. This is what makes landing particularly tricky, as the spacecraft encounters only a small amount of drag relative to the Earth’s atmosphere.
