This one is for the UFO lovers. If all goes according to plan — after a series of delays — NASA will test a saucer-shaped craft that could hold the key to a future human mission to Mars.
The test flight has been delayed several times by weather at the test site at the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, Hawaii.
The next chance to launch will be no earlier than Monday.
If conditions are suitable, an enormous balloon will lift the test vehicle carrying the disc-like Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator to a height of 120,000 feet, more than 20 miles (32 kilometers) above Earth.
Then, mission controllers will set the LDSD free to fire its rockets and try out the centerpiece of the test: a giant supersonic parachute, measuring 100 feet (30 meters) across.
For those on the ground, live video will be relayed from four cameras aboard the pioneering saucer-shaped craft.
“You get to see all the same video I do, at the same time I do,” Mark Adler, project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in an online news release.
“This year’s test is centered on how our newly designed supersonic parachute will perform. We think we have a great design ready for the challenge, but the proof is in the pudding and the pudding will be made live for everyone to see.”
This artist’s concept shows the test vehicle for NASA’s Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD), designed to test landing technologies for future Mars missions. A balloon will lift the vehicle to high altitudes, where a rocket will take it even higher, to the top of the stratosphere, at several times the speed of sound. The Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator Project is managed by JPL for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate in Washington.
Updating decades-old technology
Last year, when the LDSD was tested for the first time — the deployment of the parachute was the only problem, when it didn’t inflate as expected.
This time around, a new design is being tested: the Supersonic Ringsail parachute, which NASA says is the largest supersonic parachute ever tested for landing on Mars.
Current technology for the task — decelerating from high speeds during re-entry into the atmosphere, to the final stages of landing on Mars — dates back to NASA’s Viking Program, which put two landers on the Martian surface in 1976.
The basic Viking parachute design has been used ever since. It was successfully used again in 2012 to deliver the rover Curiosity to Mars.
NASA will need new and improved landing technologies to handle the larger spaceships of tomorrow and land them on rocky surfaces, as well as at higher elevations.
A saucer-shaped test vehicle holding equipment for landing large payloads on Mars is shown in the Missile Assembly Building at the US Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kaua’i, Hawaii. The vehicle, part of the Low Density Supersonic Decelerator project, will test an inflatable decelerator and a parachute at high altitudes and speeds over the Pacific Missile Range this June. A balloon will lift the vehicle to high altitudes, where a rocket will take it even higher to the top of the stratosphere at several times the speed of sound. This image was taken during a “hang-angle” measurement, in which engineers set the vehicle’s rocket motor to the appropriate angle for the high-altitude test. The nozzle and the lower half of the Star-48 solid rocket motor are the dark objects seen in the middle of the image below the saucer.
Atmospheric drag
NASA scientists hope this saucer-shaped craft could be the key.
“As NASA plans ambitious robotic science missions to Mars, laying the groundwork for even more complex human expeditions to come, the spacecraft needed to land safely on the Red Planet’s surface will become larger and heavier in order to accommodate explorers’ extended stays on the Martian surface,” the agency’s website said.
This means the supersonic parachute will have its work cut out to create sufficient atmospheric drag to slow the vehicles down so they can be landed safely. Using drag for deceleration means precious fuel can be saved for landing maneuvers.
A third test flight for the LDSD is scheduled for summer 2016.
Two members of the Navy’s Explosive Ordinance Disposal team perch on the test vehicle used in the first flight of NASA’s Low-density Supersonic Decelerator project. The test vehicle was fished out of the waters of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Missile Range within hours of splashdown. During the June 28, 2014, engineering flight, the saucer-shaped test vehicle climbed to over 180,000 feet (about 55,000 meters) in altitude and went as fast as four times the speed of sound.
