![]() “We think we could go to more treacherous areas, where we wouldn’t want to risk trying to place a billion-dollar rover with our current landing systems,” said Lou Giersch, SHIELD’s project manager, in a JPL press release.Ĭurrently, NASA has a limited number of safe martian landing zones identified and available for use. It was a promising first step, leaving the engineers pondering what else might be possible. And while SHIELD did flip after its initial impact, the team suspects this was due to the metal sheet it struck rather than the lander’s design. That’s around the speed at which a lander would slam into the martian surface after being slowed by Mars’ tenuous atmosphere.įollowing the mock crash landing, all the electronic devices inside SHIELD were left largely unscathed, with only some superfluous plastic components damaged. Using a bow launch system - essentially a giant sling - they then hurled the prototype and its contents at a steel plate at roughly 110 mph (177 km/h). ![]() To test the idea, the team placed a smart phone, radio, and accelerometer in their prototype SHIELD and hoisted it some 90 feet (27 meters) to the top of a drop tower at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Preparing for the final step in this process made engineers wonder: If such a hard landing could work on Earth, could it work on Mars as well? Finally, the Earth Return Orbiter would snag the sample container from Mars orbit and venture back home, where NASA plans to safely crash land the sample container in a deserted location. From there, a Sample Retrieval Lander would pick them up, and the Mars Ascent Vehicle - the first rocket ever to launch of the surface of Mars - would transport them to orbit around Mars. Once the team decides exactly where and when the samples will be picked up for return to Earth, Perseverance will deposit its stomach contents at designated sample cache depots. Since the Perseverance rover landed on Mars in February 2021, it has been busy collecting rock samples in metal tubes, storing them in its belly for now. The concept for SHIELD originated during planning for NASA’s Mars Sample Return campaign.
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