NASA successfully tested an inflatable heat shield Monday. The mushroom-shaped balloon inflated in orbit and splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n
An experimentalheatshieldfor future spacecraft landings successfully survived a test launch Monday that brought it through the earth's atmosphere at speeds of up to 7,600 mph, NASA said. <\/p>\n
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The demonstration launch from Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore involved a 680-pound cone of high-tech rings covered by a thermal blanket of layers of heat-resistant materials. The Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment, or IRVE-3, was launched from a three-stage Black Brant rocket for a suborbital flight. <\/p>\n
IRVE-3 separated from the launch vehicle about six minutes into the flight about 280 miles in the Atlantic Ocean off North Carolina. <\/p>\n
An inflation system pumped nitrogen into IRVE-3 until it expanded to a mushroom shape almost 10 feet in diameter. Engineers in the Wallops control room watched as four onboard cameras confirmed the inflatableshieldheld its shape despite the force and highheatof re-entry, NASA said. <\/p>\n
A high-speed Navy Stiletto boat based at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story was dispatched to retrieve the capsule. <\/p>\n
The purpose of the launch was to determine whether a space capsule can use an inflatable outer shell to slow and protect itself as it enters an atmosphere at hypersonic speed during a planetary entry and descent. <\/p>\n
\"We're pushing the boundaries with this flight,\" said Lesa Roe, director of NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton. \"We look forward to future test launches of even bigger inflatable aeroshells.\" <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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NASA experiment blows up in space, as intended<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NASA successfully tested an inflatable heat shield Monday. The mushroom-shaped balloon inflated in orbit and splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean Continue reading