NASA launches a giant inflatable heat shield similar to a flying saucer

NASA successfully tested this morning a giant inflatable heat shield similar to a flying saucer that could one day help people land safely Mars.

LOFTID, an inflatable ‘aeroshell’ about 20 feet in diameter, was launched from a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket in California at 04:49 ET (09:49 GMT) on Thursday.

The launch is expected to take place at 04:25 am ET (09:25 GMT); however, due to a ‘valve problem’, the launch window was extended by just over half an hour.

LOFTID made its way to low Earth orbit—less than 1,200 miles from our planet’s surface—at supersonic speeds before it inflated and then began its descent back to Earth.

At 06:34 ET (11:34 GMT) on Thursday, NASA confirmed that LOFTID had inflated and begun its descent.

It deployed its parachute to make a soft splash in the Pacific Ocean east of Hawaii at 07:08 ET (12:08 GMT).

The massive heat shield will be discovered by the Kahana II ship at sea in about two days.

NASA hopes the test will show how the heat shield can act as a giant brake to slow a future spacecraft as it enters the Martian atmosphere.

The launch was originally scheduled for November 1, but was postponed due to the need to replace the battery on board the upper stage of the Centaur launch vehicle.

Centaur will release LOFTID about 75 minutes after liftoff Thursday, while the recovery team will leave the pre-launch port aboard Kahana II and take two days to reach the drop site east of Honolulu.

LOFTID, which stands for Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator, launched together with the JPSS-2 weather satellite in polar orbit, NASA said.

Once JPSS-2 reaches orbit, LOFTID will be placed on a low-Earth orbit reentry path to demonstrate the ability of an inflatable aeroarmor or heat shield to slow down and survive reentry.

LOFTID is a deceleration test – meaning its massive airfoil acts as a giant brake as it traverses the Martian atmosphere,

As a spacecraft enters the atmosphere, aerodynamic drag helps slow it down—and is therefore an effective method of slowing a spacecraft before it lands.

However, the Martian atmosphere is much less dense than Earth’s and presents a formidable challenge to aerodynamic deceleration.

The Red Planet’s atmosphere is dense enough to provide some drag, but too thin to slow a spacecraft down as quickly as it would in Earth’s atmosphere.

LOFTID’s large expandable airfoil therefore creates more drag than other designs and begins to decelerate in the upper atmosphere, allowing it to decelerate more quickly at higher altitude.

When it comes to destinations with atmospheres—including Mars, Venus, Titan, and Earth—one of the key challenges NASA faces is how to deliver heavy payloads.

As it stands, current rigid airfoils are limited by the size of the missile’s fairing – its simplified protective shroud.

For example, you may remember the ‘seven minutes of terror’ when NASA’s Perseverance rover parachuted onto the surface of Mars last year.

Radio signals sent from NASA and back take 10 minutes for both sides to make contact, so after the ground team told Perseverance to descend, the rover took over and made the epic journey all by itself.

The spacecraft flew through the Martian atmosphere traveling at 12,000 miles per hour, but had to slow to zero miles per hour seven minutes later to land safely on the surface.

While Perseverance survived the descent unscathed using a basic parachute, the landing process is more challenging for larger payloads such as rockets with people on board.

“One answer is an inflatable airshell that can be used at a scale much larger than a canopy,” says NASA.

‘This technology enables various proposed NASA missions to destinations such as Mars, Venus, Titan, as well as returning to Earth.’

As part of the Artemis program – the successor to the Apollo program of the 1960s and 1970s – NASA aims to put humans on the moon once again this decade before sending humans to Mars for the first time in the 2030s.

The first phase of the Artemis program, an uncrewed mission to orbit the Moon (called Artemis I), is set to launch next week after repeated delays.