By Southern Research April 27, 2017
Southern Research engineers conducted tests that advanced an experimental NASA technology designed to solve a tough challenge in landing people and cargo on Mars – slowing down a spacecraft entering the Red Planet’s thin atmosphere to permit a safe touchdown.
The Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator, or HIAD, is essentially a doughnut-shaped heat shield made of soft, flexible materials. The system is like a cone of inflatable inner tubes that’s packed tightly into a spacecraft and automatically deployed to use atmospheric drag to slow a fast-moving capsule during descent.
The innovative HIAD system is being examined for possible uses such as manned missions to Mars and landing cargo weighing more than 20 metric tons on other worlds.
“NASA was able to land the Mars Rover, but that is a pretty small device,” said Jacques Cuneo, a Southern Research engineer involved in the testing of HIAD’s materials. “If humans ever go to Mars, we will need to land many things with lots of mass – structures, supplies and other vital items.
“NASA will need to land large payloads, and, right now, they just can’t do it.”
When it comes to Mars, NASA’s mission planners must contend with an atmosphere that is roughly 100 times thinner than Earth’s and composed mostly of carbon dioxide, which can float to the planet’s frigid surface as snowflakes.
FOLDING TESTS
Southern Research’s assigned task in HIAD’s development centered on a key question posed by NASA’S Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, according to Cuneo.
The HIAD’s inflatable structure is fashioned from a fastened series of pressurized concentric tubes, or tori, that form an exceptionally strong cone-shaped shield. The tori’s braided synthetic fibers are 15 times stronger than steel, according to NASA.
More:
http://www.southernresearch.org/news/nasa-inflatable-heat-shield/
