After several weather delays, engineers from NASA’s Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator project have successfully tested a flying saucer-shaped spacecraft off the coast of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii, with the ultimate goal of testing future landing technologies for Mars missions.
A saucer-shaped test vehicle holding equipment for landing large payloads on Mars is shown at the US Navy Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii. This image was taken during a hang-angle measurement, in which engineers set the 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. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
This test was the first of three planned, developed to evaluate new landing technologies for future Mars missions.
While this test was designed to determine the flying ability of the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) vehicle, it also deployed two new landing technologies – the Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (SIAD) and an enormous parachute called the Supersonic Disk Sail Parachute (SDSP) – as a bonus.
This artist’s concept shows the LDSD test vehicle. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
Those landing technologies will be officially tested in the next two flights, involving clones of the vehicle.
The LDSD vehicle along with a high-altitude balloon were launched at 2:45 pm EDT on Saturday, June 28, from the Hawaiian facility.
The test vehicle then dropped away from the balloon as planned and began powered flight. The balloon and the vehicle were about 36.6 km over the Pacific Ocean at the time of the drop.
Timeline of events for the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator test. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
The saucer-shaped vehicle splashed down in the ocean at 5:35 pm EDT, after the test flight concluded. The hardware, black box data recorder and parachute were all recovered later in the day.
Initial indications are that the vehicle successfully flew its flight test profile as planned, and deployed the SIAD and the SDSP. Imagery downlinked in real-time from the vehicle indicates that the SDSP parachute did not deploy as expected.
Hours after the June 28, 2014, test of NASA’s Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator over the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Missile Range, the saucer-shaped test vehicle is lifted aboard the Kahana recovery vessel. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
“We are thrilled about the test. The vehicle worked beautifully, and we met all of our flight objectives. We have recovered all the vehicle hardware and data recorders and will be able to apply all of the lessons learned from this information to our future flights,” said team member Mark Adler of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
“Because our vehicle flew so well, we had the chance to earn ‘extra credit’ points with the SIAD. All indications are that the SIAD deployed flawlessly, and because of that, we got the opportunity to test the second technology, the enormous supersonic parachute, which is almost a year ahead of schedule,” added team member Ian Clark, also from JPL.
