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NASA has successfully passed a spectacular test of its revolutionary new heat shield. The heat shield, called Adaptive Deployable Entry Placement Technology (ADPT), is a foldable device that opens like an umbrella. On September 12, he was transported by a suborbital rocket from Spaceport America to New Mexico. This compressible heat shield with its unique design could one day be used to deliver large payloads to the surface of other planets.
Space vehicles require reliable heat shields to protect themselves from the extreme heat of entering the atmosphere of a planet. When a spacecraft approaches a planet at speeds of tens of thousands of kilometers per hour, it compresses the atmospheric gas and creates a pressure shock, which in turn generates heat. intense around a spacecraft. The new Umbrella Shield has been designed to withstand extreme conditions, heat and pressure. It also slows a spaceship when landing a planetary surface.
"For a deployable system like ADEPT, you can perform ground tests, but in the end, a flight test demonstrates end-to-end functionality: surviving launch environments, non-gravity deployment, and empty space," our case, the Earth's atmosphere. Paul Wercinski, ADEPT Project Manager at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, said.
Thermal shields are usually rigid and rigid. With larger and larger spaceships, the compressible heat shield could be useful for future space missions.
"As a general rule, heat shields are rigid structures, but this one can be deployed in space. What this allows you to do is to work around the volume constraints of a typical launcher, which are long and thin. Brandon Smith, NASA's senior researcher on the project, said in a statement.
The shield is made from flexible 3D woven carbon fabric and supported by ribs and semi-rigid braces. It becomes completely rigid when it is flexed.
"The carbon fabric has been the main recent advance allowing this technology because it uses pure carbon yarns that are woven in three dimensions to give you a very durable surface," said Wercinski. "Carbon is a wonderful material for high temperature applications."
During the test, the heat shield separated from the rocket and deployed about 100 kilometers above the Earth. Then he safely returned to Earth, landing at White Sands Missile Range. It took about 15 minutes to complete the test. The maximum speed was 2,300 miles per hour during the test, which is three times the speed of sound.
"The flight tested the deployment sequence of the heat shield and the performance of the input."
Then the researchers will perform a test with higher orbital speeds, about 17,000 miles per hour. This would allow larger spaceships to successfully land on other planets in the solar system such as Venus or Mars and bring back samples to Earth from lunar missions.
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