NASA test launched a new inflatable heat shield today at its Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

“Our inflation system, which is essentially a glorified scuba tank, worked flawlessly and so did the flexible aeroshell,” says Neil Cheatwood, the project’s principal investigator (press release). “We’re really excited today because this is the first time anyone has successfully flown an inflatable re-entry vehicle.”

The project concept is to use an inflatable shell as a heat shield for probes entering the atmosphere of planets like Mars. As Nature’s Eric Hand noted in his piece previewing the Inflatable Re-entry Vehicle Experiment, the next generation of probes are reaching the limits of size that can be protected by a rigid heat shield.

Inflatable shields might be the way forward and today’s mission is a technology demonstration for such systems. Succumbing to RAS Syndrome, Wallops tweeted today that: “The IRVE experiment deployed and preliminary reports indicate all systems performed nominally,”

With its 20 minute flight up beyond the atmosphere and back down, IRVE may produce data to help protect future missions from burning up. The experiment itself has been consigned to a watery grave.

“After its brief flight IRVE will fall into the Atlantic Ocean about 90 miles down range from Wallops,” says NASA. “No efforts will be made to retrieve the experiment or the sounding rocket.”

Image: testing of IRVE / NASA/Sean Smith