NASA's $150 million attempt to test new flight technologies that can send bigger spacecraft, and possibly even humans, to the Red Planet was a success, even though the supersonic parachute used to slow down the vehicle's descent did not deploy correctly.
The agency's Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) flying saucer underwent the first in a series of three tests that will allow the NASA to evaluate two new technologies that are meant to make landing on Mars easier through the planet's thin atmosphere. At exactly 2:45 p.m. EDT, a giant helium-filled balloon the size of a football field took off with the spacecraft from the U.S. Navy Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii.
Two and a half hours into flight, or around 120,000 feet above the Earth, the parachute detached from the LDSD and the vehicle launched its rocket engine to soar 180,800 feet into the air at 3.8 times the speed of sound. NASA then cut off the engine and deployed its second technology, the Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (SIAD), a 20-foot donut-shaped device deployed around the flying saucer to increase drag and slow down its descent to 2.5 times the speed of sound.
At this point, a giant parachute called the Supersonic Disk Sail Parachute, the largest supersonic parachute of its kind, would have been deployed to send the LDSD on a soft landing on the Pacific Ocean, but NASA engineers say the parachute failed to open correctly and sent the vehicle splashing into the ocean.
NASA, which sent a ship to recover the black box that contains all the information they need to examine the flight, says the test was a qualified success. Dan Coatta, engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology says the tangled parachute was not a failure, but a new way to gain and apply knowledge in future tests. His fellow engineers agree.
"Because our vehicle flew so well, we had the chance to earn 'extra credit' points with the Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator," says Ian Clark, principal investigator for LDSD, in a statement. "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."
The test, which was broadcasted live over national television, was designed to examine cutting-edge applications initially for delivery supplies for long-term experiments on the surface of the Red Planet, with plans to send human astronauts in later years. To date, the JPL's Curiosity rover, which looks to be about the size of a regular sports utility vehicle, is the biggest space vehicle that has landed on Mars. The craft made a soft landing on Mars thanks to a complicated technology that involved a 51-foot-wide balloon and a sky crane.
