LA CANADA FLINTRIDGE >> Skywatchers have always looked to the skies hoping to spot a UFO. Now, scientists with NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are trying to deploy their own flying saucer.
But unlike the UFOs flown by Marvin the Martian or the slimeballs in “Independence Day,” Earthlings attempting to steer a UFO into the skies are contending with poor weather conditions.
Researchers stationed at the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii, are waiting for the rain to clear to safely launch the Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD), a Rose Bowl-sized saucer that will rocket 180,000 feet into the air and perform a landing test amid similar conditions a large-cargo vehicle landing on Mars would experience.
The launch has already been cancelled three times this past week. The next scheduled launch date in a planned launch window is Monday, then Wednesday and then June 14. But the area’s rainy 10-day forecast isn’t promising.
“We found this year has weather conditions unlike previous years,” said Mark Adler, LDSD project manager. “We’re concerned we may not have an opportunity to launch.”
A helium balloon will carry the LDSD 120,000 feet before an accelerator blasts it up to its required 180,000 feet. LDSD will operate inside a wind tunnel and balloon outward for its descent back to Earth in Mars-like conditions.
“You don’t have that many molecules to bounce off and create drag (on Mars),” said Ian Clark, LDSD principal investigator at JPL. “Here, we get the size of the vehicle right, we get the speed right, and we get the atmosphere right.”
LDSD is a step in developing more advanced landing gear. No other advancements have been made since 1972, not even to land the Mars Curiosity rover back in 2012, Clark said.
“As we go to larger and larger missions, they’re heavier and heavier,” Clark said. “We want to land them more accurately. We’re trying to come up with new ways of slowing them down. To allow us to slow these larger vehicles down we need to come up with a new drag.”
The LDSD is the first of several tests scheduled through next summer.
“The agency is moving forward and getting ready for Mars as part of NASA’s Evolvable Mars campaign,” Michael Gazarik, associate administrator for Space Technology at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in a statement. “We fly, we learn, we fly again. We have to more vehicles in the works for next year.”
There were only two places the LDSD could safely launch, Adler said: either the Australia hinterlands, or the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii.
“We searched the planet where we could do this,” Adler said. “It had to have very low winds at the surface.”
JPL will update the LDSD launch status on its website. When and if the launch does happen, it will air live on NASA TV.