When the International Space Station needed an airtight membrane, NASA turned to Aerostar Tillamook.
“There’s only been one air barrier ever certified by NASA to go to space,” said Aerostar business manager Kevin Tucker. “And we made it.”
When Oregonians and others think about Tillamook, they generally picture cows or the Tillamook Creamery. Tucker said Oregonians generally aren’t aware there’s an aerospace company in their midst.
“It’s like, ‘Oh you guys are doing secret stuff!’ Like no. It’s just different.”
The company’s expertise lies in putting together soft pieces of high-tech fabric, meaning Aerostar employs a lot of highly trained structural engineers and sewing professionals.
“The know-how that we have is how to take pieces, put them together, with very uniform loads and stresses, so that when they’re under pressure, there’s no failure points,” Tucker said. “They don’t pop.”
One of Aerostar’s main products is high-altitude balloons. Space agencies use them to carry payloads up to 23 miles high, outside 99.99% of Earth’s atmosphere, to test them.
“It’s just about like being in space, except gravity is still there,” Tucker said.
For example, Aerostar tested a parachute designed to land a spacecraft on Mars. The company took it up 120,000 feet, where the atmospheric density is similar to Mars, and dropped it. The parachute worked, but it was never used.
“They haven’t gone to Mars because, if you look at the timing of that mission, European Space Agency was partnered with Roscosmos, the Russian space agency,” Tucker said. “Things kind of dissolved right about there.”
The war in Ukraine largely ended the partnership, and the Mars mission was terminated.
Meanwhile, lifting and dropping large pieces of machinery can be tricky, which is one of the reasons Aerostar is based in Tillamook. The area has relatively uncrowded airspace.
“There’re no commercial routes. There’s military traffic and some general [traffic.] But in terms of where you watch the crisscrosses of aircraft during the day. Straight above us right now, there’s nothing.”
Inside Aerostar’s large factory near the Tillamook Airport, there are two tables, each over 300 feet long. That’s where sheets of plastic are put together to make a balloon, said engineering supervisor Ryan Tabb.
“Those are all heat-sealed together. Multiple sealing technologies here,” said Tabb. “There are overhead gantries to ride along sealers that ride along the table with the operator driving it.”
Aerostar balloons have tested all kinds of space equipment. For example, before the Ingenuity helicopter flew on Mars in 2021, Aerostar tested a glider. There are no runways on Mars, so the glider needed to be released from the spacecraft as it was falling.
“How do you pack it? How do you deploy it? At what altitude?” Those were the questions Tucker said Aerospace Tillamook needed to answer. “Putting it into flight conditions, when you’re in an aeroshell moving at supersonic speeds, is complex.”
In the end, NASA opted to fly the Ingenuity helicopter instead and it proved to be a resounding success. Aerostar is now testing an “Aerobot,” which is essentially a remote controlled balloon in space. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is considering sending one to Venus.
“It hasn’t gone yet,” Tucker said. “This would be a few years down the road. But proving that this type of system can operate in the Venus atmosphere, which is predominantly acid and there’s hundreds of degrees temperature difference between night and day, has some difficulties.”
Unlike a helicopter, a remote-controlled balloon could conceivably float around Venus for a long time, taking pictures and making measurements. Aerostar tested a prototype this summer.
“Will it ever go? I don’t know,” said Tucker. “I mean just like when we tested the aircraft to go to Mars, we proved that works.”
Aerostar is currently focused on building airbags to make sure the Orion spacecraft remains upright during splashdown. It’s part of NASA’s Artemis program to establish a long-term presence on the moon.
Aerostar is also on the cutting edge of some ground-based projects. It recently set the record for the longest ever balloon flight, well over a year and still flying. And it’s experimenting with flying balloons over wildfires, to give firefighters better aerial views and more reliable cell phone coverage.
This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.
