The experimental SHIELD lander is designed to absorb a hard impact like a car’s crumple zone. NASA has successfully landed spacecraft on Mars nine times, using cutting-edge parachutes, massive airbags, and jetpacks to safely touch down on the surface. Now engineers are investigating whether or no
. In the future, a spacecraft will carry those Martian samples back to Earth in a small capsule and safely crash land in a deserted location.
This prototype base for SHIELD – a collapsible Mars lander that would enable a spacecraft to intentionally crash land on the Red Planet, absorbing the impact – was tested in a drop tower at JPL on Aug. 12 to replicate the impact it would encounter landing on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech “The tests we’ve done for SHIELD are kind of like a vertical version of the sled tests,” Cormarkovic said. “But instead of a wall, the sudden stop is due to an impact into the ground.”On August 12, the team gathered at the drop tower with a full-size prototype of SHIELD’s collapsible attenuator – an inverted pyramid of metal rings that absorb impact.
Previous SHIELD tests used a dirt “landing zone,” but for this test, the team laid a steel plate 2 inches thick on the ground to create a landing harder than a spacecraft would experience on Mars. The onboard accelerometer later revealed SHIELD impacted with a force of about 1 million newtons – comparable to 112 tons smashing against it.