NASA\/Lori Losey<\/p>\n
The best way to solve a mystery is by gathering evidence and building a case. That\u2019s exactly what NASA researchers are doing with a series of research flights aimed at advancing a sensor for supersonic parachutes. The clues they find could help make these parachutes more reliable and safer for delivering scientific instruments and payloads to Mars.<\/p>\n
These investigative research flights are led by the EPIC (Enhancing Parachutes by Instrumenting the Canopy) team at NASA\u2019s Armstrong Fight Research Center in Edwards, California. During a June flight test, a quadrotor aircraft, or drone, air-launched a capsule that deployed a parachute equipped with a sensor. The flexible, strain-measuring sensor attached to the parachute did not interfere with the canopy material, just as the EPIC team had predicted. The sensors also provided data, a bonus for planning upcoming tests.<\/p>\n
\u201cReviewing the research flights will help inform our next steps,\u201d said Matt Kearns, project manager for EPIC at NASA Armstrong. \u201cWe are speaking with potential partners to come up with a framework to obtain the data that they are interested in pursuing. Our team members are developing methods for temperature testing the flexible sensors, data analysis, and looking into instrumentation for future tests.\u201d<\/p>\n
The flight tests were a first step toward filling gaps in computer models to improve supersonic parachutes. This work could also open the door to future partnerships, including with the aerospace and auto racing industries. <\/p>\n
NASA\u2019s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD<\/a>) funds the EPIC work through its Entry Systems Modeling project at NASA\u2019s Ames Research Center in California\u2019s Silicon Valley. The capsule and parachute system were developed by NASA\u2019s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. NASA Armstrong interns worked with Langley to build and integrate a similar system for testing at NASA Armstrong. An earlier phase of the work<\/a> focused on finding commercially available flexible strain sensors and developing a bonding method as part of an STMD Early Career Initiative project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA\/Lori Losey The best way to solve a mystery is by gathering evidence and building a case. That\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[13115,16770,38471,16774,79,193,38472,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-49633","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-ames-research-center","9":"tag-armstrong-flight-research-center","10":"tag-flight-innovation","11":"tag-langley-research-center","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-space","14":"tag-space-technology-mission-directorate","15":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}