NASA is another step closer to a Mars mission. They used explosives and a pendulum to fling the 11-foot test capsule into a pool of water.
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The 3.3-metre craft disappeared behind a bowl-shaped splash before bouncing buoyantly against safety netting. The US space agency officials said that the rules of physics haven’t seen any change but technology has improved radically. Instead of a couch-like seat to hold all of the astronauts, each will have his and her own custom-made chair to better protect the spine.
Suspended from a giant pendulum at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia, the mock spacecraft was dropped into a pool of water, with the splashdown being greeted by cheers from the small crowd that had gathered to observe.
Computer simulations have shrunk the number of actual splashdown tests from 100 to 10. For instance, one of its parachutes could fail as it returns from space or it could hit rough seas.
NASA’s Launch Services Program announced today that it selected United Launch Alliance’s (ULA’s) proven Atlas V vehicle to launch Mars 2020, its next robotic science rover.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is preparing itself to send a spacecraft with humans on Mars or any deep destinations.
The spacecraft sailed through its first unmanned test flight in 2014, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.
The design of NASA’s Mars 2020 rover leverages many successful features of the agency’s Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012, but it adds new science instruments and a sampling system to carry out the new goals for the 2020 mission.
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The next Mars rover, scheduled to launch from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station by July 2020, will search the Martian surface for signs of life as well as examine natural resources and potential hazards for future human explorers of the Red Planet.
