Inflatable Heat Shield to Get Final Test on Earth Before Spaceflight Demo

NASA is set to perform a final test of inflatable heat shield technology on Earth before moving to testing in space. The test is planned for 2 p.m. EDT Wednesday, June 15.

The Bernard Kutter Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID) is scheduled to launch with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's JPSS-2 polar-orbiting satellite from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Nov. 1. After hitching a ride to space aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket, LOFTID will inflate and then descend back to Earth from low-Earth orbit to demonstrate how the inflatable heat shield can slow down a spacecraft to survive re-entry.

Engineers at Langley are completing work to ensure LOFTID is flight-ready before it is shipped to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for final acceptance testing, then to Vandenberg for launch.

The LOFTID inflatable heat shield project is a part of the STMD Technology Demonstration Missions program. One of the challenges NASA faces is how to deliver heavy payloads (experiments, equipment, and people), because current rigid aeroshells are constrained by a rocket’s shroud size. One answer is an inflatable aeroshell that can be deployed to a scale much larger than the shroud. This technology enables a variety of proposed NASA missions to destinations such as Mars, Venus, Titan as well as return to Earth.

The atmosphere of Mars is much less dense than that of Earth and provides an extreme challenge for aerodynamic deceleration. The atmosphere is thick enough to provide some drag, but too thin to decelerate the spacecraft as quickly as it would in Earth's atmosphere. LOFTID’s large deployable aeroshell -- an inflatable structure protected by a flexible heat shield -- acts as a giant brake as it traverses the Martian atmosphere. The large aeroshell creates more drag than a traditional, smaller rigid aeroshell. It begins slowing down in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, allowing the spacecraft to decelerate sooner, at higher altitude, while experiencing less intense heating.

LOFTID is demonstrating a large aeroshell -- 6 meters in diameter or about 20 feet -- entry from low-Earth orbit, to demonstrate this technology in conditions relevant to many potential applications.

(Source: NASA. Image provided)