Parachute for Mars

[Bob Of Burleson]

NASA testing Mars parachute high over Hawaii

LOS ANGELES (AP) – The skies off the Hawaiian island of Kauai will be a stand-in for Mars as NASA prepares to launch a saucer-shaped vehicle in an experimental flight designed to land heavy loads on the red planet.

For decades, robotic landers and rovers have hitched a ride to Earth’s planetary neighbor using the same parachute design. But NASA needs a bigger and stronger parachute if it wants to send astronauts there.

Weather permitting, the space agency will conduct a test flight Tuesday high in Earth’s atmosphere that’s supposed to simulate the thin Martian air.

Cameras rigged aboard the vehicle will capture the action as it accelerates to four times the speed of sound and falls back to Earth. Viewers with an Internet connection can follow along live.

Engineers cautioned that they may not succeed on the first try.

“As long as I get data, I’ll be very happy,” said project manager Mark Adler of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2014/j ... er-hawaii/

[Bob Of Burleson]

Here's a better story:




NASA to test 'flying saucer' designed
to prevent crash landings ...
on Mars

By Noelle Swan
The Christian Science Monitor

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 Kauai, 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.

NASA investigators are currently positioned at the US Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii, waiting for the right weather conditions to test two new technologies that would let the space agency land much larger, and potentially manned, spacecraft on the red planet.

“Landing on Mars is an extremely challenging thing to do,” Ian Clark of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said at a press briefing from Kauai. “If you are going to cast your eyes on the prize of landing people on Mars, you’re going to need extremely large drag devices to slow those vehicles down.”

It takes a whole lot of engineering to slow a spacecraft that has been hurtling through space at Mach 4 to a speed that would let it safely enter Mars’ ultrathin atmosphere. The parachute technology used to deliver the Curiosity rover to Mars in 2012 dates to the 1976 Viking program and is woefully inadequate to guide larger payloads, Dr. Clark said.

Clark is the principal investigator for NASA’s Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) program, and he has led the development of two new devices to help ease large spacecrafts’ entry into Mars' atmosphere.

The first device is a six-meter (20-foot) inflatable doughnut known as the supersonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerator (SAID-R) that encircles the saucer-shaped craft. Once deployed, SAID increases the diameter of the craft and creates enough drag – theoretically – to slow the vehicle from Mach 3.8 to Mach 2.7.

The second device, a supersonic parachute, made of Kevlar covered in a special coating designed to withstand temperatures up to 600 degrees Fahrenheit, slows the craft even further.

Testing the new technologies presents enormous logistical challenges. For instance, engineers must manage to get the craft to the upper stratosphere, where conditions are akin to those of the Martian atmosphere. That's four times higher than a plane would fly, LDSD project manager Mark Adler said at the briefing.

"We use a helium balloon – that, when fully inflated, would fit snugly into Pasadena's Rose Bowl – to lift our vehicle to 120,000 feet," Dr. Adler, architect of the Mars Exploration Program, said in a statement. "From there, we drop it for about one-and-a-half seconds. After that, it's all about going higher and faster – and then it's about putting on the brakes."

There will be several opportunities to put the two new braking systems to the test over the Pacific Ocean during the next two weeks. The first comes Tuesday, but the winds need to be just right to carry the balloon over the water in the right direction, Adler told reporters.

NASA will post updates to social media and the agency website, and it will broadcast live footage of the test on NASA.gov and NASA TV.

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