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The Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment (IRVE-3) is the third ina series of suborbital flight tests of this new technology. It isscheduled to launch from the Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia'sEastern Shore this summer. Technicians will vacuum pack the uninflated 10-foot (3.05 meters)diameter cone of high-tech inner tubes into a 22-inch (56centimeters) diameter sounding rocket. During the flight test an onboard system will inflate the tubes -- stretching a thermal blanketthat covers them -to create an aeroshell or heat shield. That heatshield will protect a payload that consists of four segmentsincluding the inflation system, steering mechanisms, telemetryequipment and camera gear. After launch the rocket will climb 287 miles (462 kilometers) intothe skies over the Atlantic Ocean. The IRVE-3 will separate fromthe sounding rocket, its aeroshell will get pumped full of nitrogenand then the inflated heat shield and payload will plummet backthrough Earth's atmosphere. Cameras and instruments will transmitpictures and data to researchers in the Wallops control room theentire time. Engineers at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., whoare overseeing the project, have spent the last three yearspreparing for the test. They have studied designs, assessedmaterials in laboratories and wind tunnels and subjected hardwareto thermal and pressure loads beyond what it should face in flight. "We have to do all kinds of different testing," saidflight systems engineer Carrie Rhoades. "We do hightemperature tunnel tests in a number of facilities to check out alldifferent types of thermal protection system materials. For IRVE-3we know what should work, but for future missions we want to gobigger to carry larger payloads, so we've got to keep testing andtrying out different materials." One of the last hurdles before launch was a complete shakedown ofthe system in NASA Langley's Transonic Dynamics Tunnel, whichtechnicians de-pressurized to mimic upper atmospheric conditionswhere the aeroshell will be deployed. The team collected data inthe control room as they watched the simulated 20-minute flight ofIRVE-3. Since a wind tunnel test couldn't replicate the actualflight and separation of the spacecraft from the sounding rocket,the real action began seven minutes and 11 seconds after the teststarted. That's when cutters -- designed to snip the strings on thebag that contained the packed heat shield -- were supposed tostart. For a brief moment the team held its collective breath when thecutters seem to pause, but then came the sigh of relief as thestrings continued to pop open. The inflatable rings and theirthermal blanket started unfurling as the inflation system pumpednitrogen in correct sequence. "There are an awful lot of complex systems packed inside thepayload on IRVE-3," said Robert Dillman, the chief engineerfor IRVE-3. "When it works it looks simple and that's a goodthing. But there are a lot of internal parts that have to worktogether in order to make that simple function achievable." The inflation system test went off without a hitch so theInflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment can go to Wallops to bereadied for launch. IRVE-3 is one of NASA's many research efforts to develop newtechnologies to advance space travel. It's part of a project calledHIAD for Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator -- withinNASA's Office of the Chief Technologist's Game Changing Development(GCD) Program. "A HIAD could give NASA more options for future planetarymissions or to return cargo to Earth," said Neil Cheatwood,GCD principal investigator for HIAD. "When we go to otherplanets with an atmosphere, we actually use that atmosphere to slowus down with an aeroshell or an aerodynamic decelerator. But thesize of that aeroshell is currently limited. We can't go biggerthan the diameter of the launch vehicle." An inflatable heat shield could accommodate larger payloads thatcould deliver more and heavier science instruments and tools forexploration -- changing the way we explore other worlds. I am an expert from infraredinteractivewhiteboard.com, while we provides the quality product, such as Multitouch All In One PC Manufacturer , China Digital Visual Presenter, HD Multimedia Projector,and more.
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