While turning Martian soil into cement may take a few more years of research, NASA engineers are already developing a Simplified High Impact Energy Landing Device (SHIELD) to crash land on Mars. Why? They found the easiest way to get to the Martian surface is to crash and instead of a spacecraft’s high-speed descent, SHIELD would use an accordion-like, collapsible base that acts like the crumple zone of a car to absorb the energy.
If the tests are a success, the final design could greatly reduce the cost of landing on Mars by simplifying the harrowing entry, descent, and landing process as well as expand the options for possible landing sites. Most importantly, engineers have borrowed much of SHIELD’s design from work done for NASA’s Mars Sample Return campaign, which means less resources wasted.
- Bring to life the rocket launch that took humans to the moon with the meter-high (approximately 1: 110 scale) model rocket of the NASA Apollo Saturn V
- The Saturn V rocket kit includes 3 removable rocket stages (first, s-ii second, and s-ivb third) below the launch escape system, command and service...
- After building the Saturn V rocket, you can display the spacecraft horizontally with 3 stands; The Lunar Lander docks with the command and service...
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,” said Lou Giersch, SHIELD’s project manager.
