NASA Ready For New Technology Demonstration For Future by Kale Cunningham
NASA is getting ready to launch the JPSS-2 satellite, or Joint Polar Satellite System-2. Scheduled to lift off on November 1st (Please note that the launch could change.)
However the JPSS-2 satellite is not the main goal for the mission, hitchhiking on board the LOFTID
(Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator)
LOFTID is an inflatable heat shield, which has a main goal of proving itself for future missions to Mars and other worlds.
Heat shields are needed to help spacecraft from burning up in the atmospheres of planets, a spacecraft travels so fast to get to another planet and when they reach there, a spacecraft going so fast is going to create friction, which gets so hot it will be able to melt steel. All of the times NASA or other space agencies have landed on other planets, they have used metal heat shields that have protected them. But now with bigger and heavier spacecraft coming up like the Mars sample return mission and manned missions to other planets, metal heat shields will just be too heavy and expensive to use.
So NASA decided to come up with a cheaper way, which was LOFTID.
Before it inflates it is the size of a person, and when LOFTID does inflate it stretches over 20 feet, and it can inflate minutes before a planned landing, instead of just being dead weight.
LOFTID is made of the same material of metal heat shields, and to get rid of heat, it has small holes that slowly let heat go past it.
The planned mission is for it to launch and enter Earth's atmosphere, survive and parachute in the Pacific ocean.
Hopefully this will be successful and show that the inflatable heat shield could help the first people to land on Mars, and beyond.
Watch an animation of LOFTID’s deployment!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6IbqNFHcuU
To watch the live event on November 1st
(Please note that it could change)
Click here!