WASHINGTON — A payload hitching a ride on the launch of a weather satellite will demonstrate a technology that both NASA is considering for future Mars landings and a company is studying for rocket reusability.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 is scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 4:25 a.m. Eastern Nov. 10. The primary payload of the rocket is the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) 2 weather satellite, which will be placed in a polar orbit to collect weather data for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The launch was previously scheduled for Nov. 1 but postponed to replace a battery in the rocket’s Centaur upper stage.
A secondary payload on the launch of JPSS-2 is Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID), a NASA technology demonstration. While JPSS-2 will be deployed nearly a half-hour after liftoff, LOFTID will remain attached to the Centaur until 75 minutes after liftoff, following a deorbit burn of the Centaur.
Shortly before deployment, LOFTID will inflate a reentry shield six meters in diameter. That heat shield will slow down the vehicle from orbital velocity to Mach 0.7 as instruments on board collect data on the performance of the shield. LOFTID will then deploy parachutes to slow it down for the rest of its descent, splashing down in the Pacific east of Hawaii to be recovered by a ship.
LOFTID is the latest in a series of technology demonstrations by NASA of inflatable reentry systems whose size is not constrained by the payload fairing of the rocket. “Currently, using rigid technologies, we’re limiting the size of the aeroshell itself to fit within the fairing of a launch vehicle,” or no more than about five meters across, said Joe Del Corso, LOFTID project manager at NASA’s Langley Research Center, during a pre-launch briefing in October. That limits the size of payloads delivered to the surface of Mars to about 1.5 metric tons.
A larger aeroshell, using inflatable technology, could enable much heavier payloads, up to the range of 20 to 40 metric tons. “It’s what you need to put humans on Mars,” he said. Larger aeroshells also enable access to higher terrains on Mars where the atmosphere is not dense enough to slow down vehicles with existing systems.
NASA hopes to collect performance on inflatable heat shields with the LOFTID test. John DiNonno, LOFTID chief engineer at NASA Langley, said the heat shield will see peak temperatures in excess of 1,400 degrees Celsius during reentry and experience decelerations of up to 9g. The inflatable structure is protected by a flexible thermal protection system made of materials that can be tailored for the specific mission.
A ship off the coast of Hawaii will recover LOFTID after splashdown, but as a precaution the vehicle will eject data recorders while descending under parachutes that can be recovered separately. It will also return some limited data in real time. “We should be able to get some preliminary feedback within at least a couple hours of reentry on whether it was successful or not,” Del Corso said.
LOFTID cost NASA nearly $93 million over five years, said Trudy Kortes, director of technology demonstrations in NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. NASA is also cooperating with ULA on the mission through an unfunded Space Act Agreement, with ULA supporting integration of LOFTID on the Centaur, as well as the parachute system and recovery ship. The LOFTID mission is formally dedicated to Bernard Kutter, a ULA engineer who worked on advanced technologies but died unexpectedly in 2020.
John Reed, ULA’s chief technologist, said his company is interested in LOFTID as part of the company’s Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology (SMART) reusability concept for its Vulcan rocket. Under the SMART approach, the engine section of the Vulcan booster would detach after stage separation and deploy an inflatable aeroshell to slow it during reentry. A parachute would slow the engine section in the final phases of descent.
He said the company is also interested in broader commercial applications of the technology. “The whole focus of this effort has been to develop a path that can support not just us but also LEO commercial applications, returning products from cislunar, as well as getting on to Mars and having the downmass to really enable humanity’s expansion.”
Those future applications will require much larger aeroshells than the six-meter version being tested on LOFTID. At a briefing during the AIAA ASCEND conference Oct. 25, Michelle Munk, acting chief architect at NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, estimated ULA will likely need aeroshells 12 to 14 meters across, while Mars landers may need versions up to 16 meters across.
“We have in our development strategy scaled-up flight tests,” she said, which would also make the inflatable aeroshells more robust and include integrated guidance, navigation and control required for Mars missions.
She added that she expected that any ULA testing of larger inflatable decelerators would support NASA Mars plans. “We’ll get several flights of the hypersonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerator that will be instrumented and give us increased data sets about its performance in the flight environment, which we can use to build confidence and make improvements,” she said.
Those future tests by ULA, she said, will also help sustain vendors that produce key components of inflatable aeroshells that NASA will rely on for future missions. “We see this as a wonderful partnership and a way to maintain the supply chain and keep the learning going as we progress, in the long term, towards a Mars mission.”
Kortes said it’s too early to determine when an inflatable decelerator might be used on a Mars mission. “This is risk reduction,” she said. After LOFTID, “there is a scale-up that we would begin to talk about, begin to work on.”
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
