” The EDM was developed to supply a secondary way for the team to recover the flight test information,” said Brian Saulman, subsystem lead for the EDM at NASAs Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. “The factor we have the EDM came from the Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment flight test, where the group never ever recovered the car.”
Robert Dillman recovers the LOFTID ejectable information module engineering advancement unit from the water during a recovery test. Credit: NASA
After the LOFTID re-entry lorry re-enters Earths environment during the flight presentation, the EDM will be released from the spacecraft at an altitude of about 50,000 feet. An electrical current will trigger the modules release through a spring-loaded system. It will free-fall into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Hawaii and ought to land within 10 miles of the spacecrafts splash-down place.
The group will be able to find the EDM using several communications systems that send GPS coordinates through a weather balloon-mounted relay released by the healing team. The relay sends the collaborates to a hand-held ground station gadget, which is a customized cellular phone with a tracking application. The phone will show latitude and longitude coordinates, variety, and an arrow indicating the place of the EDM, upgrading as the EDM wanders in the ocean.
To prepare for discovering the EDM, the LOFTID group put the EDM through lots of functional tests in addition to a series of practice healing tests. Scientists and engineers checked the limits of their devices by looking for the lemon-sized item using a wide variety of methods, from playing hide-and-seek with it on land to tracking and recovering the EDM from the Atlantic Ocean.
To evaluate the healing treatment, initially, the team explored by concealing the EDM on land. In a big game of hide-and-seek, Saulman would conceal the little element for the recovery group to track. Through many versions of the healing test at Langley and in the surrounding area, the team had the ability to practice and confirm their strategies and equipment for tracking and healing.
Next, experiments moved from hide-and-seek to Marco Polo as they moved from land to the water. The team designed their testing on how they anticipate the actual LOFTID EDM recovery will go, implementing flight-like innovation and measurement methods in the Atlantic Ocean for practice.
” When we switched on our tracking equipment, we launched a weather balloon with a relay,” said Robert Mosher from NASA Langley, lead for the EDM water recovery test. “Within about ten minutes, we had actually successfully locked onto a signal and got latitude and longitude coordinates.”
Mechanical engineer Anjie Emmett holds the LOFTID ejectable data module, the small, yellow, lemon-shaped components will hold a copy of all of the data taped throughout the innovation demonstration. Credit: NASA
During the water test, the team was able to partner with the U.S. Army at Joint Base Langley-Eustis. They carried out the test as they would a male overboard drill. The EDM was tossed overboard. On board a U.S. Army Landing Craft Utility boat, the team just needed to course right when in their look for the EDM.
” The test offered important practice, working on the deck of a ship and understanding how trustworthy the signal might be when its bobbing in the ocean,” Mosher stated. “It was likewise a highlight of my profession, having the ability to coordinate the whole activity and partner with the U.S. Army.”
After these successful tests on land and sea, the small EDM is ready to play a big part in LOFTIDs flight demonstration.
NASAs Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator, or LOFTID, is showing a cross-cutting aeroshell– a type of heat shield– for atmospheric re-entry. Since existing rigid aeroshells are constrained by a rockets shroud size, one of the obstacles NASA faces for locations with an environment is how to provide heavy payloads (experiments, equipment, and people). One response is an inflatable aeroshell that can be deployed to a scale much bigger than the shroud. This innovation makes it possible for a range of proposed NASA missions to locations such as Mars, Venus, Titan as well as go back to Earth.
LOFTID is dedicated to the memory of Bernard Kutter, supervisor of innovative programs at United Launch Alliance (ULA), who passed away in August 2020 and was an advocate for technologies like LOFTID that can lower the cost of access to area.
LOFTID is set up to launch in November aboard a ULA Atlas V as a secondary payload with the Joint Polar Surveyor System-2 (JPSS-2), a polar-orbiting weather condition satellite.
The LOFTID task is managed and funded through NASAs Technology Demonstration Missions program, part of the firms Space Technology Mission Directorate. The project is led by NASAs Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, in partnership with United Launch Alliance and with contributions from NASAs Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. NASAs Launch Services Program, based at the firms Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is accountable for handling the launch service.
When the LOFTID vehicle reaches space following the launch, the heat guard will pump up, then the LOFTID re-entry car will enter Earths environment and splash down in the Pacific Ocean.
Located in the LOFTID re-entry lorry, the EDM consists of both sensor and camera information recorded during LOFTIDs flight. The LOFTID re-entry car likewise tape-records this information, as the EDM was created as a redundant source of flight information to be recovered upon splashdown. After the LOFTID re-entry lorry re-enters Earths atmosphere throughout the flight demonstration, the EDM will be launched from the spacecraft at an altitude of about 50,000 feet. NASAs Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator, or LOFTID, is demonstrating a cross-cutting aeroshell– a type of heat shield– for atmospheric re-entry.
Imagined from the left, Robert Walker, Brian Saulman, Robert Dillman, and Robert Mosher, partner with the U.S. Army to perform a water recovery test of the ejectable data module for LOFTID. Credit: NASA
A recovery team will use GPS to browse a roughly 900-mile area of the Pacific Ocean for an intense yellow pill after a November 2022 presentation of an inflatable heat shield. About the exact same shapes and size as a big lemon, the capsule brings important information.
This small package is an ejectable data module (EDM) for a NASA technology presentation, Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID). LOFTID will show an inflatable heat shield technology that might potentially be used to land humans on Mars. Once the LOFTID lorry reaches space following the launch, the heat shield will inflate, then the LOFTID re-entry automobile will get in Earths environment and crash in the Pacific Ocean.
Illustration of Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID). Credit: NASA
Found in the LOFTID re-entry lorry, the EDM consists of both sensing unit and cam information tape-recorded throughout LOFTIDs flight. The information will include the temperature levels and pressures experienced by the heat shield and will reveal the group how well LOFTID performed throughout the presentation. The LOFTID re-entry lorry likewise tape-records this data, as the EDM was developed as a redundant source of flight data to be recovered upon splashdown. This is just in case the group is unable to recover the re-entry vehicle itself.