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When a polar satellite designed to improve weather forecasting launched early Thursday, an experimental heat shield tagged along. It could land humans on Mars.
The two separate missions both launched aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex-3 at Vandenberg Space Force Base in Lompoc, California.
Both missions were originally set to lift off on November 1, but a faulty battery on the rocket’s upper stage caused a delay. Engineers exchanged and retested the battery to set the stage for a new launch date.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA have been launching weather satellites since 1960. The Joint Polar Satellite System-2, or JPSS-2, will be the third satellite within a fleet of NOAA’s latest generation of polar-orbiting environmental satellites.
The orbiter will collect data that can help scientists predict and prepare for extreme weather events like hurricanes, snowstorms and floods.
The satellite will be able to monitor wildfires and volcanoes, measure the ocean and atmosphere, and detect dust and smoke in the air. It will also monitor the ozone and atmospheric temperature, providing more insight into the climate crisis.
Once it’s in orbit and looping around the planet from the North Pole to the South Pole, the satellite will be renamed NOAA-21. The satellite will observe every spot on Earth at least twice a day, according to NOAA. And when you check the weather on your phone, it will be fed by data captured by the satellite.
The JPSS-2 will join two other satellites, the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership and NOAA-20, that comprise the Joint Polar Satellite System.
“JPSS provides more than twice daily observations over the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean that helps meteorologists monitor weather systems where we do not have the benefit of weather balloons, and only limited buoys, compared to the dense weather station network over land,” said Jordan Gerth, meteorologist and satellite scientist at NOAA’s National Weather Service before the launch.
A secondary payload hitching a ride on the rocket is NASA’s Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator technology demonstration, or LOFTID.
The mission is designed to test the inflatable heat shield technology needed to land crewed missions on Mars and larger robotic missions on Venus or Saturn’s moon Titan. Something like LOFTID could also be used when returning hefty payloads to Earth.
Sending robotic explorers or humans to other worlds that have an atmosphere can be challenging because the current aeroshells, or heat shields, in use depend on the size of a rocket’s shroud.
But an inflatable aeroshell could circumnavigate that dependency — and open up sending heavier missions to different planets.
When a spacecraft enters the atmosphere of a planet, it’s hit with aerodynamic forces, which help slow it down.
On Mars, where the atmosphere is just 1% the density of Earth’s atmosphere, extra help is needed to create the drag necessary to slow and safely land a spacecraft.
That’s why NASA engineers think a large deployable aeroshell like LOFTID, which inflates and is protected by a flexible heat shield, could put on the brakes while traveling down…
Read More: Heat shield that could land humans on Mars hitches ride to space