NASA to test IRVE-3 Inflatable Re-entry system

Your spacecraft is falling from the skies at an initial speed of Mach 25.

Your reentry heat shield, that has to survive a 7,800 degrees Celsius (14,072° F) plasma shock, is a finely tuned hi-tech amalgam of refractory metals and carbides and reinforced carbon-carbon ablation materials.

Care to replace your mighty heat shield with a balloon? Not likely! But that is exactly what NASA is considering.

This summer, the third in a series of NASA suborbital test flights will attempt to demonstrate the feasibility of inflatable spacecraft.

The Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment (IRVE-3) is scheduled for a suborbital test flight from the Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore later this northern summer.

Part of the Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD) project within NASA's Office of the Chief Technologist's Game Changing Development (GCD) Program, IRVE-3 is one of NASA's many projects to develop new technologies to advance space travel.