Advancements in HIAD Performance

JBE proposes to test new material candidates that exhibit desirable material characteristics to provide areas for improvement in future Deployable Hypersonic Inflatable Atmospheric Decelerator (HIAD) construction. These areas of improvement include a reduced weight, reduced volume, improved handling characteristics, increased optimizability and improved thermal capability.nbsp;A ground testing campaign to develop more advanced HIAD subsystems is critical to accelerate the development of HIAD technology to meet new and exciting missions including manned missions to Mars.nbsp;One material candidate is an Opacified Fibrous Insulation (OFI) which can be manufactured much thinner than the current Gen-2 HIAD insulators. Phase I development will be focused on establishing the feasibility of manufacturing improved HIAD configurations by fabricating and testing component and subsystem samples.nbsp;Component testing includes sewing insulator samples and testing them for their seam strength. Subsystem testing includes fabricating a representative area ofnbsp;the improved FTPS configuration,nbsp;packing it into a volume constrained fixture,nbsp;compressing the samplenbsp;with a ram, and evaluating the sample for damage.