Put NASA An ambitious plan to return a piece of Mars to Earth for study, called a sample return mission Mars The idea is to send a robotic team consisting of a probe, a rover, and an ascent vehicle to the Red Planet to capture the samples that are collected and seal them in tubes by the rover. These samples will then be launched from the surface of Mars into orbit, where they will be collected and returned to Earth, according to for digitartlend report.
Although that sounds complicated, NASA is working on some of the hardware needed for this ambitious long-term mission, and the agency recently tested a new design for the Earth Entry System vehicle that will transport the sample through our planet’s atmosphere and to the surface, and it was a dramatic test – dropping the prototype vehicle from 1,200 feet and knowing whether he has survived.
The testing focused on the vehicle’s chassis, testing one possible design for a chassis that would have to protect the microelectronics and a sample’s interior from heat and forces passing through Earth’s atmosphere.
To do so, the test was conducted at the Utah Test and Training Range, where a helicopter with a model of the vehicle and an isoshell called a Manufacturing Display Unit (MDU), which was covered with sensors and was 1.25 meters wide, boarded the MDU and recorded its landing, coming from Elevating 1,200 feet, the MDU reached speeds that engineers believe are equivalent to a typical landing mission.
“The MDU was very stable during the descent – it didn’t sway much, and it landed successfully, meaning there was no structural damage and it survived the impact as expected,” said Jim Corliss, chief engineer of the Mars sample. Returns the system of entering the Earth, in a statement.
Another positive test result was that the antenna landed in the right direction, with the MDU landing on its nose as the engineers had hoped. Now, the team can continue working on plans for the Earth Entry System with more tests later this year.