NASA has confirmed that it has successfully test-flown its Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) "flying saucer" after weather conditions allowed the trial run on June 28.
A balloon carrying a saucer-shaped NASA spacecraft floated off a launch tower at the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii, to test a landing system that might be used for future missions to Mars.
"This is an opportunity for us to take a look at the data, learn what happened and apply that to the next test," NASA engineer Dan Coatta, with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said during an interview on NASA Television, according to Reuters.
"That's a more valuable experience for us than if everything had gone perfectly," Coatta added.
The space craft works by inflating a "Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator" (SIAD), which NASA said is as a "large, doughnut-shaped first deceleration technology that deployed during the flight."
The balloon is big enough to fill the Rose Bowl football stadium in Pasadena, California. It launched at 2:40 p.m. EDT and reached its desired altitude of 120,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean approximately 2.5 hours later.
NASA delayed the launch six times this month due to unsuitable weather conditions.
The launch and test were both broadcasted live on NASA television.
Though the test went well, the 110-foot parachute failed to properly inflate, according to Reuters, citing engineers monitoring the test.
The point of the test was to put the prototype landing system through conditions that it would likely face during a mission to Mars.
"When we're actually going to use it for real, it's going to be on a spacecraft, entering the atmosphere of Mars at thousands of miles per hour, so we have to come up with some way on Earth to simulate that condition in order to prove that these things work," Coatta said.
NASA will spend over $200 million on the five-year project, which started back in 2010.
LDSD's next test will take place next summer, according to Reuters.
"We are thrilled about yesterday's test. The test vehicle worked beautifully, and we met all of our flight objectives," LDSD project manager Mark Adler said, according to The Register. "We have recovered all the vehicle hardware and data recorders and will be able to apply all of the lessons learned from this information to our future flights."
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