Movies, books, and videos have taught us that for a spacecraft to land on any surface, it must land slowly. But curiously, the new plan of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, for its acronym in English) to get to Mars is the opposite.
According to a report published on the website of 20 minutesthe US space agencye is working on a new landing system called SHIELDwhich could replace the one you currently use.
According to the researchers, the system would make it possible to land in places where it was not possible before and would even lower the current cost of space missions. NASA had used different methods to land on the Martian surface, such as parachutes, thrusters, giant airbags, aerial cranes, among others. But SHIELD would leave all of these behind.
What will SHIELD be like?
SHIELD would be used in the Mars Sample Retrieval (MSR) mission in which NASA will use the Sample Retrieval Lander (SRL) spacecraft to descend to the Red Planet, collect samples from the Perseverance rover, and launch them into space. Those samples will be taken by the Earth Return Orbiter (ERO) probe, which will send them back to Earth.
The innovative landing system has a circular base and a pyramid shape, as shown in the illustration above, and it folds by absorbing the energy produced when hitting the ground.
Lou Giersch, SHIELD project manager, explained: “We think we could go to more complicated areaswhere we wouldn’t want to risk trying to land a billion dollar rover with our current landing systems”
The SHIELD team tested their invention with a test that consisted of a launching system similar to that of a slingshot, a method that mimics the one used to test the resistance of cars to collisions. After the test, the engineers verified that all the devices had been unharmed.
“The only hardware that was damaged was some plastic components that we weren’t concerned about. Overall, this test was a success”Giersch explained.
