NASA Wants To Crash Land On The Red Planet; Here’s The Reason

Photo Credit: California Academy of Sciences

NASA sees Mars as one of the planets that hold secrets of ancient life. To learn more about the Red Planet, the marquee space agency has tested several landing methods including jetpacks, parachutes, and airbags. Now, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is testing a way to deliberately crash land on the Martian surface.

The space agency recently released a video showing the Mars team at JPL testing its Simplified High Impact Energy Landing Device (SHIELD) lander concept. It could enable future Mars to cut costs significantly.

SHIELD Is Built To Last

The video shows SHIELD using a collapsible base that is capable of absorbing the impact of the crash. The device was dropped from a 27-meter-tall tower. To put its design through a stringent test, SHIELD was made to land on a steel plate to make sure the impact is harder than what the device would experience on the Martian surface.

The base took some serious beating and smashed on the plate at a speed of 177 kph. However, the impact did not affect the components (including a smartphone) inside SHIELD were unharmed.

While the device might not be built to ferry rovers to Mars, the new concept could come in handy to carry robust science apparatus to the Red Planet. With JPL’s dedication to refining the device, it might not take too long before NASA launches a mission with plans to deploy SHIELD.

NASA’s Mars Missions Going Strong

NASA missions are constantly making progress on Mars. In September, its Perseverance rover another important discovery when it found the building blocks of life in a sample it collected from the Jezero crater, a place believed to have hosted liquid water millions of years ago.

The organic molecules found by the rover can be formed in many ways including non-organic ones. However, this discovery is not proof of Mars harnessing life in the past, but it does indicate that life could have thrived there millions of years ago.

The Perseverance rover will be exploring the Jezero river delta as part of its second science campaign and will collect different rock samples in the process. One particular sample was collected from a 3-foot wide outcrop rock known as Wildcat Ridge. Scientists studied the sample using Perseverance’s SHERLOC instrument and found that the sample had organic molecules.

These samples will be brought back to Earth in another mission dubbed the Mars Sample Return mission slated for the 2030s.