NASA’s Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) launched on Monday, June 8th from the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, Hawaii. The saucer-shaped vehicle was used to test new technologies that will help NASA land heavier payloads than current technology will allow on the surface of planets including Mars. The test vehicle was carried by balloon to about 120,000 feet. After release, an engine took the vehicle to 180,000 feet, where the tests occurred in the thin atmosphere to simulate Mars’ atmosphere. This flight test was the second of three planned for the project. The LDSD mission is designed to test entry and descent technology in the form of a donut-shaped airbag and a supersonic parachute that can be deployed while the vehicle is traveling several times the speed of sound.
Tag: Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator
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NASA conducts spin test on15-foot-wide saucer-shaped Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD)
NASA’s Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) project will be flying a rocket-powered, saucer-shaped test vehicle into near-space from the Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility this June from Kauai, Hawaii. To prepare for the flight, a “spin” test was conducted from the gallery above a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where this near-space experimental test vehicle is being prepared for shipment to Hawaii. During the broadcast, the 15-foot-wide, 7,000-pound vehicle underwent a “spin-table” test. The LDSD crosscutting demonstration mission will test breakthrough technologies that will enable large payloads to be safely landed on the surface of Mars, or other planetary bodies with atmospheres, including Earth.
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This Week at NASA
The Morpheus prototype lander took to the skies above the Kennedy Space Center to test a suite of landing and hazard avoidance technology and self-navigate to a safe landing. Over in Hawaii, NASA’s Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator, a rocket-powered, saucer-shaped test vehicle, has completed final assembly and will be flown in an experimental flight test is planned for June. And, NASA is moving ahead with construction of the lander for the InSight mission to Mars where it will probe the Martian sub-surface. An ISS Science Forum took place Wednesday at Johnson Space Center, a Spacex Dragon Cargo craft departed the space station while a new expedition crew trains in Russia and students launch rockets that reach nearly 20,000 feet this week on This Week at NASA!