NASA technologists will get a chance next summer to relive the good old days when Agency engineers would affix space-age gizmos to rockets just to see if the contraptions worked.
In what will be the first of four high-altitude balloon flights to begin in the summer of 2013, technologists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., and Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va., are preparing to test new deceleration devices that could replace current descent technologies for landing ever-larger payloads at higher elevations on Mars.
NASA is conducting a series of rocket sled tests at the U.S. Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake, Calif., in preparation for full-up tests of the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator Project, or LDSD. The project is testing inflatable and parachute decelerators to slow spacecraft prior to landing and allow NASA to increase landed payload masses, improve landing accuracy and increase the altitude of safe landing-sites. Credit: JPL
NASA hasn't tested deceleration technologies supersonically since 1972 when it conducted four high-altitude tests of a supersonic parachute used during the Viking program. "We’ve been stuck with that design ever since," said Mark Adler, NASA’s Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) program lead. NASA will use the same technology again this year when it delivers the Curiosity rover to Mars.
However, planetary landers of tomorrow will require much larger drag devices than any now in use. "What we need is new technology to slow larger, heavier landers from the supersonic speeds of atmospheric entry to subsonic ground-approach speeds," Adler said.
For more info, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/gizmo-launches.html
In what will be the first of four high-altitude balloon flights to begin in the summer of 2013, technologists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., and Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va., are preparing to test new deceleration devices that could replace current descent technologies for landing ever-larger payloads at higher elevations on Mars.
NASA is conducting a series of rocket sled tests at the U.S. Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake, Calif., in preparation for full-up tests of the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator Project, or LDSD. The project is testing inflatable and parachute decelerators to slow spacecraft prior to landing and allow NASA to increase landed payload masses, improve landing accuracy and increase the altitude of safe landing-sites. Credit: JPL
NASA hasn't tested deceleration technologies supersonically since 1972 when it conducted four high-altitude tests of a supersonic parachute used during the Viking program. "We’ve been stuck with that design ever since," said Mark Adler, NASA’s Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) program lead. NASA will use the same technology again this year when it delivers the Curiosity rover to Mars.
However, planetary landers of tomorrow will require much larger drag devices than any now in use. "What we need is new technology to slow larger, heavier landers from the supersonic speeds of atmospheric entry to subsonic ground-approach speeds," Adler said.
For more info, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/gizmo-launches.html
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