NASA awaits calm seas off Kauai to test new technology for landing craft on Mars

KEKAHA, Kauai » For the second day in a row, NASA postponed a high-profile launch here Wednesday despite a forecast of calm breezes and sunny weather in the low 80s.

Turns out turbulent seas are the reason for the delay of a test launch of a flying saucer set to travel aloft at supersonic speeds with a splashdown in the ocean some 25 miles offshore.

Big waves and rough waters due to a significant south swell make the UFO-like aircraft and its payload of data much too difficult to recover, NASA mission managers said.

Tuesday was the beginning of a nearly two-week launch window for the mission at the Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands. Large swells that started pounding southern shores on Monday are expected to continue Wednesday.

The goal for NASA’s Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator project is to test two devices — a parachute and inflatable inner tube — designed to slow down spacecraft with heavy payloads as they approach a Mars landing.

"Hawaii is front and center helping us to get to Mars," declared D.C. Agle, spokesman for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which is leading the mission.

During a news conference at the Navy base Monday, Ian Clark, principal investigator with the decelerator project, reminded the media that Pacific explorers used the stars and the wind to help guide them across a vast ocean.

"Today, as we cast our eyes from this land of red sand to another place of red sand, the planet Mars, we continue to rely on a lot of those same technologies," Clark said. "Our spacecraft still use stars to navigate across the expanses of space. We still rely on winds, not to carry us across space, but to help slow us down when we arrive at Mars."

NASA officials are hoping this test will go a little smoother than the one it conducted on Kauai last year, when a large parachute failed to deploy as expected and ended up shredding at nearly 2,000 mph.

Despite the misstep, Clark called the launch "phenomenally successful" because of the wealth of data mission scientists collected.

This year they are back with a new, more durable parachute with concentric rings and 2,000 panels sewn together on pieces of Kevlar. At 100 feet in diameter, it will become the largest parachute ever to be deployed.

A test of the new "ring sail" design at Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake in California using a rocket sled to pull the parachute found its breaking point to be even greater than needed, officials said.

For the upcoming launch, a balloon will lift the 6,808-pound test vehicle high in the Earth’s stratosphere to an altitude of 120,000 feet before a rocket propels the craft out over the ocean at four times the speed of sound to 180,000 feet.

At Mach 3, the craft will deploy the first of its newfangled braking devices — an inflatable inner tube made from Kevlar that fits around the saucer to create enough drag to slow it to Mach 2.4.

That’s when the new parachute will pop out and, if everything goes to plan, the craft will slow down even further and safely splash in the ocean about 40 minutes later. There, ocean crews will retrieve the vehicle and parachute.

Overall, it’ll take anywhere from three to six hours to complete the mission from balloon launch to vehicle splashdown, officials said.

Officials said these new drag devices are among the first steps that will lead to the space agency landing humans and habitats safely on Mars.

Current landing techniques date back to NASA’s Viking mission, which put two landers on Mars in 1976. But those techniques are limited, they say, and NASA must advance the technology to a new level of sophistication if it is to land heavier spacecraft on Mars.

The near-space environment high over the Pacific is similar to the thin atmosphere of Mars, said Mark Adler, decelerator project manager with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

And the Pacific Missile Range Facility is the perfect place for the test, he said.

"There’s really no other place in the world we can find that has the right conditions to be able to launch a balloon, have it go out away from populated areas and to have the support services at the range with its communications and instrumentation," Adler said.

Last week the Rev. Tom Takahashi of Kekaha, blessed the space vehicle during a naming ceremony on base. Takahashi named the vehicle "Kalani Ike Ike Kahonua," which means "highest boy in heaven."

Last year Takahashi named the project’s launch tower "Onikahonua," which means "mover of the Earth," and the 2014 test vehicle "Keiki O Ka Honua" or "boy from Earth."

Last year weather conditions delayed the initial test launch beyond its first two-week window. This year’s window continues until June 12. If a launch can’t be accomplished by then, a second window is planned for July 7-17.

Another test is planned here in 2016.