ICON satellite launch: How new NASA tech could pave way for manned exploration missions
The ICON spacecraft is designed to investigate the characteristics of the ionosphere while flying in a low-Earth orbit, at 560 km above Earth.
While US President Donald Trump has called for the creation of Space Force as a sixth arm of the US military, the existing National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) continues to push out the bounds of scientific exploration. The launch of NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) satellite is now set to take place on October 6. ICON will study Earth’s ionosphere - the near frontier of space - where terrestrial weather from below meets space weather from above. The mission is to help determine the physical process at play, and ultimately pave the way for mitigating the effects on technology - including communication systems and on society. Based on the existing LEOStar-2 platform, ICON will fly in an orbit around Earth at a 27-degree inclination and at an altitude of some 360 miles to study the ionosphere around the equator. On Wednesday, NASA launched and tested a new umbrella-like heat shield, opening the door to landing humans on Mars. The new technology - dubbed the Adaptable Deployable Entry Placement Technology (ADEPT) - stores like a folded umbrella inside smaller rockets, opening with the handle up in space to protect larger payloads as they enter a planet’s atmosphere, said Brandon Smith, NASA’s principal investigator on the project. The shape allows it to protect larger areas than current heat shields.
‘At the larger scales it could be used for human missions to Mars’
“At the larger scales, it could be used for something as grand as human Mars explorations, or potentially human cargo landings on Mars,” Smith told Reuters at the Spaceport America launch site, about 50 miles (80 km) north of Las Cruces, New Mexico. NASA is preparing to send a new rover robotic lander to Mars in 2020 and plans to send human astronauts in 2033. The rover will search for previous signs of life on Mars and demonstrate technology that could help astronauts survive there. The goal of sending humans to Mars was set in 2010 during the administration of President Barack Obama and was affirmed by President Donald Trump last December. ADEPT, launched with a Spaceloft suborbital rocket made by UP Aerospace, was tested at the spaceport in southern New Mexico. It deployed between 100 and 120 kilometres before opening and making its way back to Earth, landing at White Sands Missile Range. Data gathered from the test will not be available until the shield is recovered, officials said. The system, once implemented, will allow NASA to send more complex missions to other planets. Meanwhile, India’s government said last month that it expected to spend less than 100 billion rupees (€1.19bn) on its first manned space mission to be launched by 2022, suggesting it is likely to be cheaper than similar projects by the United States and China.