Skip to main content

Watch NASA drop capsule from 1,200 feet to test Mars Sample Return system

NASA has an ambitious plan to bring a piece of Mars back to Earth for study. Called the Mars Sample Return mission, the idea is to send a robotic team consisting of a lander, rover, and an ascent vehicle to the red planet to pick up samples being collected and sealed in tubes by the Perseverance rover. These samples will then be launched off the Martian surface and into orbit, where they’ll be collected and brought back to Earth.

MSR EES MDU Drop: Side by Side

If that sounds complicated, it is. NASA is working on some of the hardware required for this ambitious long-term mission, and recently the agency tested out a new design for the Earth Entry System vehicle which will carry the sample through our planet’s atmosphere and to the surface. And its test was a dramatic one — dropping a model of the vehicle from 1,200 feet and seeing if it survived.

The test was focused on the vehicle’s areoshell, testing out one possible design for the shell which has to protect the delicate electronics and sample inside from the heat and forces of passing through Earth’s atmosphere. To do this, the test was performed at the Utah Test and Training Range, where a helicopter ascended with a model of the vehicle and areoshell, called a Manufacturing Demonstration Unit (MDU), that was covered in sensors and measures 1.25 meters across. The MDU was then dropped by the helicopter and its descent was recorded. Coming from an altitude of 1,200 feet, the MDU reached the speeds that would be engineers think are equivalent to a sample landing mission.

“The MDU was very stable during descent — it didn’t wobble around a lot, and it landed successfully, in the sense that there was no structural damage and it survived impact as expected,” said Jim Corliss, chief engineer for the Mars Sample Return Earth Entry System, in a statement.

Another positive finding of the test was that the aeroshell landed in the correct orientation, with the MDU landing on its nose as the engineers hoped it would. Now, the team can continue working on plans for the Earth Entry System with further tests to come later this year.

Editors' Recommendations

Georgina Torbet
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
NASA declares Mars InSight lander mission officially over
This illustration shows NASA's InSight spacecraft with its instruments deployed on the Martian surface.

Just over four years after reaching Mars, NASA has officially announced the end of its InSight lander mission.

The declaration came on Wednesday, December 21, after NASA failed to make contact with the lander across two consecutive attempts, leading the mission team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to conclude that InSight’s solar-powered batteries had run out of energy, a state referred to as “dead bus.”

Read more
Final messages from NASA’s Mars lander will bring a tear to your eye
A view from NASA's InSight lander showing its wind and thermal shield covering some of its science instruments.

The last image from NASA's InSight lander shows the wind and thermal shield covering some of its science instruments. NASA

It’s been known for some time that NASA’s InSight Lander was coming to the end of its operations on Mars after four years of service. And it looks as if its final communication with Earth has just taken place.

Read more
How will NASA keep Mars astronauts safe from cosmic radiation? Here’s the plan
AstroRad Vest

The Artemis I mission, which recently completed a historic test flight around the moon, didn't have any astronauts on board -- but it did have two very special passengers: Helga and Zohar, a pair of highly anatomically detailed dummy torsos, one of which wore a special radiation shielding vest for the journey. Their mission? Measure radiation exposure in deep space and determine whether a vest can help protect astronauts from the unseen dangers of space.

 

Read more