NASA parachute sensor testing could make EPIC Mars landings

Touchdown rovers and helicopters on Mars is a problem. It is a good greater problem when you do not have sufficient details about how the parachutes are enduring pressure through the descent to the floor. Researchers at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Analysis Heart in Edwards, California, are experimenting with available, extremely elastic sensors that may be mounted to a parachute throughout testing to offer the lacking knowledge.

Understanding how the cover materials stretches throughout deployment can improve security and efficiency by quantifying the boundaries of the material and enhancing present laptop fashions for extra dependable parachutes for duties reminiscent of touchdown astronauts on Earth or delivering scientific instruments 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, challenge supervisor. NASA’s House Expertise Mission Directorate funds the workforce’s work via the Early Profession Initiative challenge.

Beginning with 50 potential sensor candidates, the workforce narrowed down and examined 10 sorts of various sensors, together with commercially obtainable and developmental sensors. The workforce 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. It’s also simple to connect to knowledge recording programs, 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 workforce discovered learn how to connect the sensors to the material, they have 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 test is vital 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 certainly one of our important measurement objectives.”

This stage of testing was completed in partnership with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. A high-speed model of this take a look at, which simulates the pace of the parachute deployment, was carried out at NASA’s Glenn Analysis Heart in Cleveland.

The workforce used a bubble take a look at 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 take a look at construction. When it’s pressurized from the within, the silicone membrane expands the material and sensor right into a bubble form. The take a look at is used to validate the sensor’s efficiency because it bends and is in comparison with the opposite take a look at outcomes.

With the EPIC challenge nearing completion, follow-on work may embrace temperature checks, creating the info acquisition system for flight, figuring out if the sensor will be filled with a parachute with out antagonistic results, and working the system in flight. The EPIC workforce can be working with researchers at NASA’s Langley Analysis Heart in Hampton, Virginia, to flight take a look at their sensors later this yr utilizing the middle’s drone take a look at, which drops a capsule with a parachute.

As well as, the EPIC workforce is partnering with the Entry Techniques Modeling Group at NASA’s Ames Analysis Heart in California’s Silicon Valley to suggest an all-encompassing parachute challenge aimed toward higher understanding parachutes via modeling and take a look at flights. The collaborative NASA challenge could end in higher parachutes which might be safer and extra reliable for the approaching period of exploration.