Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator Modeling and Reconstruction

The Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID) mission was a flight test performed on November 10, 2022. LOFTID is a 6-m-diam Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD) that is stowed for launch as a secondary payload, inflated in space, and separated from the launch vehicle before conducting entry, descent, and landing (EDL). The main objective of the flight test was to demonstrate EDL at scale using HIAD technology at flight conditions relevant for future Earth and Mars missions. LOFTID successfully inflated and separated with a spin rate of [Formula: see text], landed within 1 h on-parachute off the coast of Hawaii, and was successfully recovered. LOFTID reentered Earth’s atmosphere at [Formula: see text], achieved a peak deceleration of 9 Gs and a peak heat rate of [Formula: see text], and demonstrated angle-of-attack stability throughout the entirety of flight. Onboard instrumentation provided flight data, which was saved onto an ejectable data recorder that was ejected at [Formula: see text] and successfully recovered. Despite the loss of inertial measurement unit data, techniques were developed to reconstruct the estimated flight performance as described in this paper. This paper presents the trajectory analysis, aerodynamics modeling, and reconstructed flight performance of the LOFTID reentry vehicle.