NASA conducted the test launch of its flying-saucer like Low Density Supersonic Decelarator (LDSD) test vehicle off of Hawaii on Saturday. The launch went well but the spaecraft's parachute failed to deploy.
The launch happened in the Pacific Missile Range Facility of the U.S Navy located at Kauai island at 2:40 PM EDT. The result of the flight test would help LDSD engineers to assess how a vehicle like LDSD, which was designed to slow down a spacecraft's descent, would work in Mars' atmosphere.
The test flight was originally set to June 3 but got postponed by the NASA engineers due to harsh weather conditions.
Despite the problem encountered in the parachute system, NASA remained confident.
"We're doing something that hasn't been done before," LDSD principal investigator Ian Clark, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told Space.com. "While I'm optimistic that things will go well, if they don't, that's probably even better, because we tend to learn more from the failures than from the successes."
The LDSD was equipped with a 100-foot wide parachute. This was the biggest parachute to reach altitudes at the level by the vehicle was dropped off. It also had saucer-like devices called the Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerators (SIADS).
There were two SIADs attached to the unit; one is 20 feet wide while the other measured 26 feet in diameter. Both of these would work by slowing down the speed of descent of the vehicle by increasing the pull of its drag.
The LDSD test launch used a balloon that carried the 7,000 pound test vehicle and its SIADs up to a height of 23 miles. The balloon was designed to drop the craft at this altitude. After its release from the balloon, the flying-saucer's rocket motor should function and increase its speed four times the speed of sound at a level of 34 miles and higher. After it reached the desired height, the parachutes and the SIADs were supposed to deploy which failed to happen.
