Splashdown of the Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator was nose down, which was exactly as planned. It even inflated in the ocean, roughly 500 miles away from Hawaii — a bonus milestone for the engineering team.
"This is one of the most critical technologies that we're establishing right now with this mission, and also with that first successful orbital flight and recovery," Jim Reuter, NASA's associate administrator for the space technology mission directorate, said during the NASA Television livestream just after the splashdown.
"This is a great, great opportunity to get flight data and see how it actually performed," Greg Swanson, LOFTID instrumentation lead at NASA's Ames Research Center, said during the same livestream."We know it performed well enough to make it great," he added of the mission. The $93 million LOFTID, which launched alongside the Joint Polar Satellite System-2 , is an expandable aeroshell designed to slow a spacecraft's entry through the Martian sky and reduce the amount of heat created by atmospheric friction. NASA says the tech represents one solution to landing in the ultra-thin
, which makes landings especially delicate because spacecraft encounter only a fraction of drag compared to Earth's atmosphere.
No, I read The Wreck of the River of Stars.
Took people just 60 years to go from powered fight to the Moon. In the 50 years since leaving the moon... Low Earth orbit. It's embarrassing we weren't on Mars by 1982.
Sure, as long as I don’t go first …
i will fly astral to mars waiting you there. 😀
Yup why not. I Trust those scientists know what they are doing. If not it would be a good way to die 🚀 plus they have to do a lot of test beforehand
Works for me in Kerbal Space Program… 🤔
👍😘
There are no oceans on Mars so unless they try landing it on rocky terrain we will not know.
I’d like anything that would land me on Mars!
They can’t even get a rocket off the ground yet to try for the moon for the first time never mind Mars .
I'm not entirely sure that I wanna go to Mars🤔
How many Gs would we be pulling on entry?
You can take all billionaires to Mars and leave them there.
Yes but I’d be dead so …
My Heroic Martian Rovers Friends❤️ alone on the red planet waiting for us😰😰😰
'Atlas rocket bids farewell to California as ULA readies for Vulcan' by NASASpaceflight / ChrisG_NSF - After JPSS2/LOFTID launch, ULA will convert Vandenberg SLC-3E pad equipment from AtlasV to Vulcan space