Technology that could help humanity land heavy hardware on Mars will be tested in space early next week.
A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V The rocket is scheduled to launch the Joint Polar Surveyor System-2 (JPSS-2) weather satellite from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base early Tuesday morning (Nov. 1).
JPSS-2 – a US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration vessel that will help researchers improve weather forecasts and monitor the effects of climate changeamong other tasks – is not the only payload aboard the Atlas V. Also on Tuesday is the Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID), a technology demonstrator whose applications could extend beyond our home planet.
Related: Powerful new Earth observation satellite JPSS-2 to study the “butterfly effect” of the weather
A new kind of chassis
LOFTID is an expandable aeroshell, a type of heat shield that engineers are eyeing for missions to the Red Planet. The thin Martian atmosphere makes landing there difficult; Incoming spacecraft encounter some drag, but not nearly as much as it feels in Earth’s air.
So it takes more than parachutes to get payloads down safely Mars. spirit and opportunity Rovers, for example, also used springy airbags to soften their fall. And the agency developed a rocket powered sky crane to land his curiosity and persistence Rovers, both of which are about the size of an SUV and weigh about 1 ton (here on Earth anyway; they’re lighter on Mars, where surface gravity is only 40% as strong as on our planet).
However, these missions pretty much pushed the Sky Crane’s weight limits. New entry, descent and landing technologies are needed to safely deliver super-heavy payloads – such as habitat modules for a future research base – to Mars, NASA officials have pointed out.
Expandable aeroshells are a possible solution. These saucer-like structures are designed to squeeze tight enough to launch aboard conventional rockets. But they inflate significantly upon arrival at their planetary destination, potentially offering enough atmospheric drag to help land objects much more massive than Perseverance or curiosity. (Retarders aren’t the whole answer; parachutes would still be part of the plan, too.)
The $93 million LOFTID project started just five years ago, but the basic idea goes way back.
“The original concept actually dates back to the ’50s and ’60s,” said Joe Del Corso, LOFTID project manager at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia, during a press conference earlier this month. “Unfortunately, they didn’t have the materials or structures at the time; they weren’t advanced enough to actually realize the capability.”
NASA has conducted ground and atmospheric tests of expandable aeroshells, including an attempt in 2015 in which one was carried high into the skies over Hawaii aboard a giant balloon. (This test didn’t go according to plan, however; the supersonic parachute attached to the aeroshell torn apart on descent.)
But LOFTID will take testing to a new level.
“It is the first flight test of this technology in low Earth orbit and the largest test article to date,” said Trudy Kortes, director of technology demonstrations at NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, during the press conference.
Related: To land safely on Mars, stay level and fly to the right
The flight plan
LOFTID is packed tightly in a bag that is 7.4 feet high and 4.3 feet wide (2.3 x 1.3 meters). It sits below JPSS-2 on the Centaur upper stage of the Atlas V.
The Centaur will place JPSS-2 in a sun-synchronous polar orbit about 28 minutes after launch on Tuesday and then maneuver itself onto a re-entry path. Seventy-five minutes into flight, the Centaur will release LOFTID, which will fly back down Earth.
The aero skin will have expanded to its full width of 19.7 feet (6 m) at this point. LOFTID will hurtle through our atmosphere, experiencing high temperatures of around 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit (1,400 degrees Celsius) before deploying parachutes and soft-landing in the Pacific Ocean near the Hawaiian Islands.
Mission team members will study the data LOFTID collects on the way down and use it to round out their understanding of the capabilities and potential of expandable aeroshells. That potential is intriguing and not limited to Red Planet missions, Kortes said.
“Ultimately, this technology can enable us to launch new missions to Mars [and] Venus; even the largest moon of Saturn, titaniumbecomes a possibility because of the dense atmosphere there,” she said. “And it can also be used to return payloads to Earth.”
ULA is particularly interested in this return-to-earth angle. The launch company is collaborating with NASA on LOFTID as part of an unfunded Space Act deal because they want to evaluate the potential use of decelerators on future missions Volcanic Centaur Missilethe successor of Atlas V.
ULA wants to reuse them Blue origin BE-4 engines powering the Vulcan Centaur first stage and upgradeable aeroshells like LOFTID could be a good way to bring this valuable hardware safely back to Earth.
“All the data we get from the LOFTID mission will be used to help correlate models and get a much better understanding of what to expect from the Vulcan reuse system,” says James Cusin, an operations engineer in Advanced Programs Division of ULA. said in a statement (opens in new tab).
Mike Wall is the author of “Out there (opens in new tab)(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaelwall (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or on Facebook (opens in new tab).
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