LIHUE — NASA officials are calling Saturday’s experimental test flight off the coast of Kauai a success, despite a malfunction of the saucer-shaped vehicle’s gigantic parachute.
During a media conference Sunday, Dorothy Rasco of the Space Technology Mission Directorate said the launch from Kauai’s Pacific Missile Range Facility was another important first for the agency — one that will enable future exploration of the red planet.
Eventually, that could even lead the way for human missions.
“We took technical risks yesterday in Hawaii to reduce the risk of landing on Mars tomorrow,” she said.
For three years, NASA has been working to design, build and fly a first-of-its-kind test vehicle, dubbed the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator. A pair of technologies aboard the LDSD is designed to allow for landing larger, heavier payloads on Mars.
“It worked beautifully, absolutely beautifully,” said project manager Mark Adler of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “(Saturday) was just a great day.”
Unfavorable wind conditions earlier this month kept LDSD on the ground for nearly two weeks. On Saturday, however, Mother Nature cooperated. And when the giant, 34-million cubic foot helium balloon finally lifted off from PMRF around 8:45 a.m., with the LDSD in tow underneath, cheers filled the control room.
It took about two hours for the balloon to reach 120,000 feet. Once at that altitude, the balloon dropped the rocket propelled LDSD, which soared from 24 to 32 miles above the Earth and traveled at four times the speed of sound.
The first of the vehicle’s two landing technologies, a doughnut-shaped tube called the Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (SIAD), deployed as expected, slowing the vehicle to Mach 2.5, according to NASA.
“All the early indications are that it was flawless,” LDSD project manager Ian Clark said of the SIAD.
The vehicle’s parachute, however, the largest supersonic parachute ever built, did not function as smoothly.
“We see it begin to try to inflate, (but) we don’t quite fully get there,” Clark said. “But, I mean, that’s why we’re doing these kinds of tests.”
While the project team won’t know exactly what went wrong until it can review and analyze on-board video and data, Clark said he and others have ideas.
Despite the malfunction, the LDSD remained intact.
“Even though the chute didn’t perform 100 percent as expected, a device that large back there is still generating a fair amount of drag,” Clark said.
He estimates the LDSD hit the water — around 11:35 a.m. — traveling between 20 and 30 miles per hour.
A team waiting in boats offshore was able to recover all equipment, including the balloon, vehicle, parachute and a black box containing important data from the test flight. Over the next several weeks, the NASA team will analyze the information in order to begin preparations for two additional LDSD flights planned for next summer.
“Recovering the vehicles and data recorders is amazing and will provide the opportunity to learn,” Rasco said. “Considering the complexity of the flight and our knowledge that parachute inflation is always a huge uncertainty, this is a terrific outcome.”
Rasco also said the flight is a reminder of why NASA tackles technical problems and conducts tests — in order to build tools needed for future exploration.
“Technology drives exploration, and yesterday’s flight is a perfect example of the type of technologies we are developing to explore our solar system,” she said.
NASA has invested $200 million on the project, which began in 2010 and will continue through 2015.
