Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. News

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

By

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.

Recommended Videos

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.

Related

“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

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
Watch NASA’s cinematic animation of upcoming Mars Sample Return mission
Animation screen grab showing NASA's upcoming Mars Sample Return mission.

NASA has released a cinematic animation showing some of the key moments from the upcoming Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission.

Mars Sample Return: Bringing Mars Rock Samples Back to Earth

Read more
Mars Express orbiter has relayed data from seven different Mars missions
An artist's impression of Mars Express. The spacecraft left Earth for Mars on 2 June 2003. It reached its destination after a six-month journey, and has been investigating the planet since early 2004.

When a rover is exploring the surface of Mars, it doesn't send data straight back to Earth. That's for two reasons: Firstly, it would require a large, powerful antenna which would be cumbersome and expensive to add, and secondly, because of the rotations of Earth and Mars any location on the surface would be pointing in the wrong direction some of the time.

So, to get data back from Mars surface missions, we use a network of Mars orbiters, which collect data from rovers and landers and relay it back to Earth. Known as the Mars Relay Network, these orbiting spacecraft take on relay duties in addition to their scientific roles observing the red planet. Recently, one of these orbiters, the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Mars Express set a new record for relaying data from seven different Mars surface missions.

Read more
Perseverance rover to drop off samples for return to Earth
This annotated image from NASA’s Perseverance shows the location of the first sample depot – where the Mars rover will deposit a group of sample tubes for possible future return to Earth – in an area of Jezero Crater called Three Forks. The image was taken Aug. 29, 2022.

The NASA Perseverance rover isn't only exploring Mars for the scientific discoveries it can make now -- it's also paving the way for future missions which intend to bring samples back from Mars to Earth for the first time. This complicated plan involves multiple vehicles including spacecraft, a lander, and two helicopters, which will work together to collect the samples from the Martian surface, take them to orbit, and return them to Earth. But Perseverance is getting the process started by collecting samples, sealing them up in tubes, and leaving these tubes on the surface for future missions to collect.

Now, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have announced that they have selected the first samples to be deposited on the surface ready for collection. “Never before has a scientifically curated collection of samples from another planet been collected and placed for return to Earth,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters, in a statement. “NASA and ESA have reviewed the proposed site and the Mars samples that will be deployed for this cache as soon as next month. When that first tube is positioned on the surface, it will be a historic moment in space exploration.”

Read more