NASA Recovers Inflatable Heat Shield From Pacific Ocean After Orbital Test

LOFTID provided limited data during the demonstration, which is why it was crucial to retrieve the shield so that NASA engineers can take a look at the data collected throughout its descent. The results of the demonstration will be available within a few days, NASA says.

It’s not yet clear whether LOFTID performed as expected during its reentry. The heat shield splashed down in the ocean “a few minutes later than originally thought based on the expected mission timeline,” NASA wrote in a short update. LOFTID should have slowed down from a maximum speed of Mach 29 to Mach 0.7 during its reentry, but the onboard data still needs to confirm its speed.

If the experiment is successful, it could one day assist in crewed missions to Mars, as well as heavier payload missions to Venus or Saturn’s moon Titan.

“The LOFTID test represents a major step towards flight readiness of large surface area heat shields,” Sadaf Sobhani, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell University, said in an emailed statement. “This is important because future exploration missions, such as landing humans on Mars, will require heat shields much larger than what can fit within a rocket payload, therefore deployable technologies will enable such otherwise unattainable missions.”

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