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when Large experimental protruding heat shield in space Facing a hard re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere last week, the aeroshell survived and NASA officials called it a “great success”.
A technology demonstration could be the basis for landing technology that takes humans to Mars.
A low-Earth-orbit flight test of the Inflatable Deceleration Technology Demonstration, or LOFTID, resulted in its Nov. 10 spaceflight as a secondary payload alongside Joint Satellite System Polar Satellite-2, a polar weather satellite.
After LOFTID separated from the polar satellite and inflated, it reentered the atmosphere from low Earth orbit.
Upon reentry, LOFTID encountered temperatures of up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,649 degrees Celsius) and speeds of nearly 18,000 mph (28,968 kilometers per hour) – the ultimate test for the materials used to build the inflatable hull, which includes a ceramic fabric fabric called silicon carbide. .
The Heat shield and backup data logger splashed in the Pacific Ocean About two hours after launching, hundreds of miles off the coast of Hawaii, a team was stationed in a boat to retrieve items.
The raw data helped the team determine whether the airframe was effective at slowing down and surviving a steep dive from low Earth orbit into the ocean. The result: “A resounding yes,” said Trudy Curtis, director of technical offerings for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate.
A full performance study of LOFTID should take about a year.
The mission aims to test inflatable heat shield technology that could also land larger robotic missions on Venus or Saturn’s moon Titan, or return huge payloads to Earth. The actual air shields or heat shields used depend on the size of the missile envelope. But an inflatable antenna could work around that dependency and open up heavier missions to different planets.
LOFTID was about 20 feet (6 m) wide.
When a spacecraft enters a planet’s atmosphere, it is hit by aerodynamic forces, which help slow it down. On Mars, where the atmosphere is less than 1 percent as dense as Earth’s, extra help is needed to build up the drag needed to slow down and land a spacecraft safely.
That’s why NASA engineers think a large, deployable antenna like LOFTID’s, which is inflated and protected by a flexible heat shield, could hit the brakes as it travels through the Martian atmosphere. The aeroshell is designed to create more clouds in the upper atmosphere to help the spacecraft slow down sooner, which also prevents some overheating.
Currently, NASA can land a one metric ton (2,205 lb) rover on Mars, such as the car-sized Perseverance rover. Something like LOFTID could land 20 to 40 tons (44,092 to 88,184 pounds) on Mars, said Joe Del Corso, LOFTID project manager at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
When the recovery team pulled the airframe out of the ocean, they were surprised to find that the exterior “looked absolutely pristine,” said John DeNono, LOFTID chief engineer at NASA Langley. “She wouldn’t have known she had such an intense comeback,” he said.
Indeed, the inflatable structure is in good condition, it looks like it can be reused and flown again, Diono said, but it needs rigorous testing before making such a decision.
There is still a huge amount of data to process, including the specific temperatures LOFTID encountered at various points in its journey.
Once the full study is complete, scientists can use the results to work on the next larger generation of LOFTIDs. The experience is adapted to the running demo with the polar satellite. Next, LOFTID is to expand to test how it will perform on a mission to Mars, which would require an increase in its overall size three to four times.
The mission, which began a few days earlier The massive Artemis I rocket has set off on a journey to the Moon And conversely, it’s a “great success” that shares a common goal with the Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the moon and eventually land crews on Mars.
“To send people into space on the moon or to send them to Mars, we need stuff — a lot, which means we have to put a lot of mass into space,” del Corso said.
“We now have the ability to take heavy payloads into space and bring them back down. These two successes represent huge leaps in enabling human access and exploration. We’re going to space and we want to be able to stay there.”
