NASA is about to land even bigger vehicles on Mars.
After being launched aboard the last United Launch Alliance Atlas V Rocket Lifting off from the West Coast on Wednesday November 10, an inflatable heat shield technology demonstrator called AIR TIME seemed to make a seamless journey through space and back. If so, this mission marks a key moment in NASA’s long journey to eventually bring humans to March.
Splashdown from the low Earth orbit flight test of an inflatable decelerator went nose-down, which was exactly as expected. It even inflated in the ocean, about 800 km from Hawaii – an extra step for the engineering team.
“This is one of the most critical technologies we’re establishing right now with this mission, as well as this first successful orbital flight and its recovery,” said Jim Reuter, NASA associate administrator for the Missions Directorate of NASA. space technology, during NASA Television. livestream right after the splashdown.
Related: Next-generation Mars inflatable landing gear will be tested at launch on November 1
After deployment in space, NASA visually confirmed via live video the full inflation of LOFTID at approximately 125 km altitude, marking the start of re-entry. Telemetry was briefly lost as the demonstrator returned to Earthbut everything turned out fine in the end.
The inflatable technology splashed down just 8 km from the Kahana II recovery vessel, allowing easy recovery, and LOFTID jettisoned its flight recorder as planned for data collection.
“It’s a great opportunity to get some flight data and see how it actually went,” said Greg Swanson, LOFTID instrumentation manager at NASA Ames Research Center, during the same livestream. “We know it worked well enough to make it great,” he added of the assignment.
The $93 million LOFTID, which launched alongside the Joint Polar Satellite System-2 (JPSS-2), is an expandable aeroshell designed to slow a spacecraft’s entry into the Martian sky and reduce the amount heat created by atmospheric friction. NASA says the technology represents a solution for landing in the ultra-thin Martian atmospherewhich makes landings particularly tricky because spacecraft only experience a fraction of the drag compared to Earth’s atmosphere.
Parachutes are not enough to send even smaller payloads to Mars; for example, the size of a golf cart Spirit and Opportunity the rovers fell to the surface in a set of airbags that softened the fall. the biggest Curiosity and Perseverance rovers required a rocket powered celestial crane to bring SUV-sized vehicles to the surface.
The celestial crane probably maxed out bringing to the surface the one-ton masses of each of the two largest rovers, which is why NASA is testing this inflatable hull to land humans and the cargo they need to live. on the Red Planet. The flying saucer shape is designed to slip into a conventional rocket upon launch, but expands and inflates as it arrives at the Red Planet and its atmosphere. (Parachutes would also be used to ensure the payload’s safe arrival on Mars.)
Certainly, the dates of human landing on Mars remain far in the future while NASA remains focused on its Artemis program. Artemis I just overcame Tropical Storm Nicole which hit the east coast of Florida overnight. He may be embarking on his unmanned voyage around the moon on November 16, kicking off a series of missions that will include a moon landing on Artemis 3 later in the 2020s.
There is a lot of technology that could be transferred between human lunar missions and excursions to Mars, although LOFTID is an exception because the moon has no appreciable atmosphere. Mars Expeditions for Humans Will Likely Happen at least in the 2040s. In the shorter term, NASA and the European Space Agency plan to launch an uncrewed device sample return mission to recover the most promising hidden rocks from the Perseverance rover’s work on the red planet.
Elizabeth Howell is co-author of “Why am I taller (opens in a new tab)?” (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book on space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @howellspace (opens in a new tab). Follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in a new tab) Where Facebook (opens in a new tab).