The Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator from NASA resembles a flying saucer, and the space agency is inviting the public to watch a new test being conducted on the revolutionary spacecraft.
The UFO-like vehicle is designed, in part, to land massive payloads on Mars, in preparation for the first NASA missions to the Red Planet, scheduled to begin sometime during the 2030s. The landing craft is designed to inflate during descent and start spinning in order to create atmospheric drag, slowing the payload for touchdown.
The LDSD will be subjected to a spin table test on March 31. An hour-long live video broadcast of the test will be available for viewing. The video will be broadcast on the Ustream channel for Jet Propulsion Laboratory starting at noon EDT.
The LDSD weighs 7,000 pounds and has a diameter of approximately 15 feet. The craft is designed to land payloads on any planet with a significant atmosphere, including Earth.
"The technologies will not only enable landing of larger payloads on Mars, but also allow access to much more of the planet's surface by enabling landings at higher-altitude sites," NASA officials report.
In June, the LDSD will lift off from the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, Hawaii, traveling to the edge of space in the next major examination of the capabilities of the next-generation landing craft. The vehicle will be lifted high into the atmosphere through the use of large high-altitude balloons before being released for descent to Earth.
In June 2014, two critical pieces of equipment were flight-tested by NASA engineers, including the Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (SIAD), a large doughnut-shaped air brake. This system was able to slow the descent of the craft from 3.8 times the speed of sound to Mach 2.
Also onboard that flight was the Supersonic Disk Sail Parachute, the largest supersonic parachute ever deployed. This chute was twice the size of the device used to land the Curiosity rover on the Red Planet. Such massive parachutes are necessary for spacecraft traveling to Mars due to the tenuous atmosphere on that world. It did not deploy as expected, and will be retested.
"Our test vehicle performed as advertised. The SIAD and ballute, which extracted the parachute, also performed beyond expectations. We also got significant insight into the fundamental physics of parachute inflation. We are literally rewriting the books on high-speed parachute operations, and we are doing it a year ahead of schedule," said Ian Clark, JPL's prinicipal investigator for the LDSD project.
The new event will be hosted by Gay Hill of Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Viewers watching the spin table test will be able to send questions to NASA engineers through the Ustream website or Twitter, using the hashtag #AskNASA. The event will stream from 12 to 1 p.m. EDT.
