Browse Topic: Launch vehicles
When NASA and other agencies send landers to Mars and other planets, they rely on existing orbiters to relay the data during the critical entry, descent, and landing (EDL) phase. The current orbiters are aging and there are no current NASA plans to replace them. Future landers have a critical challenge to communicate during a very risky mission phase. The InSight mission will land on Mars in September 2016 with no direct-to-Earth radio link. Instead, Insight expects the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to be fully functional and placed in an orbit to be in view of the EDL time and place. MRO will take many hours to play back the data to Earth, leaving the project staff without knowledge if their valuable spacecraft has made it safely.
NASA has developed a class of low-density, flexible ablators that can be fabricated into heat shields capable of being packaged, stowed, and deployed in space. Several flexible versions have been developed by infiltrating a pyrolyzing silicone resin into flexible, low-density felts made of carbon, polymer, or ceramic materials. The material is produced by immersing a flexible fibrous substrate in a diluted polymer resin, curing the polymer resin using heat and/or catalyst, and removing the solvent.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) required an innovative and modular approach to the design and development of the electronics needed to control the propulsion and deployment components, as well as the electronics necessary to support safety inhibits for personnel and range requirements. Since these electronics would be designed in parallel with the systems they would interface with, they would need to be flexible enough to quickly accommodate ongoing design changes.
Stennis Space Center (SSC) is one of three government-operated rocket engine test facilities in the United States and is the primary center for testing and flight-certifying rocket propulsion systems for future space vehicles. Safety is a top priority at NASA-SSC. To safely test and certify rocket engines, monitoring technologies for rocket test stands, which (1) verify compliance with federal, state, and local government guidelines; (2) ensure a safe work environment for its personnel at ground testing facilities; as well as (3) monitor environmental impacts, are all required. Additionally, NASA has a need to monitor engine combustion efficiencies and engine health of a variety of launch vehicle configurations utilizing liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen, isopropanol, and kerosene. Multi-analyte measurement technology is essential for a safe and effective working environment. Therefore, for the advancement in multi-analyte technology in the rocket testing industry, a device was created
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