NASA plans on testing crash landing space module on Mars to make inter-planetary exploration cheaper

NASA as well as a number of other space agencies have had many successful missions to Mars, and are currently exploring the Martian surface for a number of reasons. All in all, NASA themselves have landed on Mars about 9 times so far. However, the space agency now wants know, what it would take to crash land onto a different planet, and how should they go about it.

NASA plans on testing crash landing space module on Mars to make inter-planetary exploration cheaper

NASA is currently testing out an entirely new way to land on the surface of Mars and other similar planets, in which, instead of going for a soft landing, they plan to crash land their vehicles.

The American space agency had just successfully conducted their DART mission, in which they crashed a basic satellite into the Didymos moon of the Dimorphos mini asteroid. NASA plans to take a similar approach with their latest experiment, but this time around, the objective is to ensure minimal damage to the crash-landing spacecraft.

To that end, NASA has designed a new experimental lander called SHIELD or Simplified High Impact Energy Landing Device. The new lander uses an accordion-like collapsible base, which functions in a manner similar to the crumple zone of a car. This would allow NASA to build a superstructure that would be free of impact, on top of the base structure.

To test whether this theory is plausible, a team of scientists and engineers dropped a full-sized prototype of the SHIELD’s collapsible attenuator, which consisted of an inverted pyramid of metal rings that would absorb a majority of the impact. They also fitted the superstructure of the aircraft with a couple of computers, a radio, a smartphone and an accelerometer to gauge the impact that the electronics would have to deal with.

The SHIELD was dropped at a speed of 110mph to mimic how it would land on Mars. Normally, spacecrafts reach speeds of up to 14,500mph before they enter the lower atmosphere of Mars. However, the atmospheric drag reduces that speed by a significant amount.

If successful, then this newer design will help to drastically reduce the cost of landing on Mars by simplifying entry, landing and expanding options on Mars and even beyond the red planet. “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. Maybe we could even land several of these at different difficult-to-access locations to build a network,” Lou Giersch of NASA’s JPL, SHIELD’s project manager, said in NASA’s blog.



from Firstpost Tech Latest News https://ift.tt/mWXIov0

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

COVID-19 origins: Should we pay more attention to the lab leak theory and formally investigate it?

Image
A year and a half into the pandemic, we still do not know exactly where the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19, came from. The prevailing view so far has been that the virus “spilled over” from bats into humans. But there are increasing calls to investigate the possibility that it emerged from a lab in Wuhan, China, where Covid first appeared at the end of 2019. So what do we know for sure, and what do we need still to find out? We know the sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is close to that of bat coronaviruses . Several decades ago its “ancestor” was circulating in bat populations in southern Asia. But there are still many unanswered questions: we don’t know how the virus arrived in Wuhan, how its sequence evolved to allow human infection, and under what conditions it infected the first people who crossed its path. And for each of these stages, we don’t know whether there was a human contribution (direct or indirect). Zoonotic transmission pathways, in other words the pas
Read more

Menstrual cups are cheaper, more sustainable than pads and tampons for women

Image
Every year in America, women spend at least US$2.8 billion on sanitary pads and tampons that can take hundreds of years to decompose . Is there a more economical and environmentally friendly way? To find out, we asked Susan Powers , a professor of sustainable environmental systems at Clarkson University about her work comparing the environmental impact of tampons, sanitary pads and menstrual cups. What is a menstrual cup? A menstrual cup is a type of reusable feminine hygiene product. It’s a small, flexible bell-shaped cup made of rubber or silicone that a woman inserts into her vagina to catch and collect menstrual fluid. It can be used for up to 12 hours, after which it is removed to dispose of the fluid and cleaned. The cup is rinsed with hot water and soap between each insertion and sterilized in boiling water at least once per period. A cup can last up to 10 years . Although menstrual cups have been around for decades, they historically have been less popular than pads or ta
Read more

Human bodies respond to infections differently depending on the time of day

Image
When microorganisms – such as bacteria or viruses – infect us, our immune system jumps into action. It’s highly trained to sense and eliminate infections and clear up any damage caused by them. It’s typically assumed our immune systems work the exact same way regardless of whether an infection occurs during the day or at night. But research spanning over half a century now shows our bodies actually respond differently at day and night. The reason for this is our body clock, and the fact that each cell in the body, including our immune cells, can tell what time of day it is. Our body clock has evolved over millions of years to help us survive. Every cell in the body has a collection of proteins that indicate the time depending on their levels. Knowing whether it’s day or night means our body can adjust its functions and behaviours (such as when we want to eat) to the correct time. Our body clock does this by generating 24 hour rhythms (also termed circadian rhythms ) in how cells f
Read more