NASA engineer Ashley Korzun talks about entry, descent and landing technologies.

At NASA's Langley Research Center, aerospace engineer Ashley Korzun works on aerodynamics modeling for technologies related to the goal of landing large payloads — including humans — on Mars. In this video, she talks about several technologies including the Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator or HIAD.

[kencissel]

The idea of the inflatable heat shield sounds great since you can place a very large shield in front of the landing craft. Have you tried cold soaking the folded up shield at the low temperatures expected in the journey to Mars and then tried inflating it from its cold soaked temperature? It would be good to know ahead of time that the materials are not too brittle to be useful at cold temperatures or at least determine that a heating cycle of some sort is needed before inflation.

[rooker-jbkc]

Would it be possible to turn Hubble, & point it at the iss, then we could watch you docking, that would be so cool, bet we won't get that, so have to put up with paintings, & cgi crap, not good value, for the money.