Touchdown rovers and helicopters on Mars is a problem. It’s a fair larger problem if you don’t have sufficient details about how the parachutes are enduring pressure in the course of the descent to the floor. Researchers at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Analysis Middle in Edwards, California, are experimenting with available, extremely elastic sensors that may be fastened to a parachute throughout testing to supply the lacking knowledge.
Understanding how the cover materials stretches throughout deployment can improve security and efficiency by quantifying the bounds of the material and enhancing present laptop fashions for extra dependable parachutes for duties corresponding to touchdown astronauts on Earth or delivering scientific devices and payloads to Mars. That is the work Enhancing Parachutes by Instrumenting the Cover, or EPIC, seeks to advance the flexibility to measure the pressure on a parachute.
“We’re aiming to show which sensors will work for figuring out the pressure on parachute cover materials with out compromising it,” stated L.J. Hantsche, venture supervisor. NASA’s House Expertise Mission Directorate funds the staff’s work by means of the Early Profession Initiative venture.
Beginning with 50 potential sensor candidates, the staff narrowed down and examined 10 sorts of various sensors, together with commercially accessible and developmental sensors. The staff chosen the three most promising sensors for continued testing. These embrace a silicone-based sensor that works by measuring a change in storage {of electrical} cost because the sensor is stretched. Additionally it is simple to connect to knowledge recording methods, Hantsche defined. The second sensor is a small, stretchable braided sensor that measures the change in electrical storage. The third sensor is made by printing with a metallic ink onto a skinny and pliable plastic.
Figuring out strategies to bond every of the sensors to tremendous skinny and slippery cover materials was exhausting, Hantsche stated. As soon as the staff found out the right way to connect the sensors to the material, they had been prepared to start testing.
“We began with uniaxial testing, the place every finish of the parachute materials is secured after which pulled to failure,” she stated. “The check is essential as a result of the stretching of the sensor causes its electrical response. Figuring out the correlation of pressure and the sensor response when it’s on the material is considered one of our important measurement targets.”
This stage of testing was completed in partnership with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. A high-speed model of this check, which simulates the velocity of the parachute deployment, was carried out at NASA’s Glenn Analysis Middle in Cleveland.
The staff used a bubble check for the sensors, which simulates testing of a 3D parachute. It consists of the material pattern and a silicone membrane sandwiched between a four-inch-diameter ring and the check construction. When it’s pressurized from the within, the silicone membrane expands the material and sensor right into a bubble form. The check is used to validate the sensor’s efficiency because it bends and is in comparison with the opposite check outcomes.
With the EPIC venture nearing completion, follow-on work might embrace temperature checks, creating the info acquisition system for flight, figuring out if the sensor could be filled with a parachute with out opposed results, and working the system in flight. The EPIC staff can also be working with researchers at NASA’s Langley Analysis Middle in Hampton, Virginia, to flight check their sensors later this 12 months utilizing the middle’s drone check, which drops a capsule with a parachute.
As well as, the EPIC staff is partnering with the Entry Programs Modeling Group at NASA’s Ames Analysis Middle in California’s Silicon Valley to suggest an all-encompassing parachute venture geared toward higher understanding parachutes by means of modeling and check flights. The collaborative NASA venture might end in higher parachutes which can be safer and extra reliable for the approaching period of exploration.