LOFTID it is the low-earth orbit flight test of an inflatable decelerator
So it's the next flight mission of the HIAD technology, which is essentially an inflatable heat shield
It's a six meter heat shield
And once it reinterred source atmosphere
it will actually be the largest blunt body object to reenter Earth's atmosphere to inflate the
HIAD where we want it to re-enter it to maintain kind of your
Stability as you reenter through Earth's atmosphere. You have to carry a lot of gas to make that happen
So we actually have two tanks that have provided by the United Launch Alliance who has a space act with NASA to perform this mission
They're partners with us in this and they provided three tanks
And so we're testing one of the three as our kind of qualification tank
So right now we're doing a blowdown test of the tank
So we'll fill it to that 3,000 psi
And let it vent to atmosphere
And we'll take measurements all along the vent path and within the tank itself to see the gas temperature to see what it's looking like
So then we use that information and data to correlate our models to get a better idea of how it's going to respond in flight
And the cool thing about high ad is that it is actually on the new cutting edge cusp of technology for heat shield
So traditionally heat shields are made with metallics or ceramics and they can only be they're pretty firm
So if your rocket is about this big in diameter your heat shield can also only be that same size
so law suit is interesting because it actually can compact to a much much smaller size and then inflate to much larger than anything you
Would see traditionally and this helps us in the form of drag
For example, if we're going to Mars the atmosphere is very very thin
And so we want to create more drag as we're coming in. So it's a larger heat shield enables that technology
 
