NASA Tests New Robotic Lander for Future Moon, Asteroid Missions

By Nancy Atkinson - October 1, 2009 at 2:58 PM UTC | Space Exploration
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The best way to study the new-found water on the Moon would be with in-situ instruments. Since humans won't be making any lunar landings for at least a decade, the next best option is robotic spacecraft. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center is developing and testing a new robotic lander to explore not only the Moon, but also asteroids and Mars. This design is definitely next generation: it's bigger than any lander yet and MSFC is currently testing the all-important final of reaching the destination: landing.

"Specifically, what we are doing at Marshall is identifying the terminal - or the final - phase of landing, and designing a robotic lander to meet those needs," said Brian Mulac, a test engineer at Marshall, quoted in an article in the Huntsville Times. "That last part is the highest risk of setting down on the moon."

Of course, parachutes can't be used for landing on the Moon or asteroids, since neither destination has an atmosphere, so thrusters are key for landing.

Large, oval-shaped tanks on the craft are used to store fuel for thrusters. Thrusters guide the lander, controlling the vehicle's altitude and speed for landing. An additional thruster on this test vehicle, above, offsets the effect of Earth's gravity so that the other thrusters can operate as they would in a lunar environment.

Just in case the tests don't go as planned, a huge net is place under the lander to catch the vehicle and avoid damaging it.

As the saying goes, it's not the fall that's dangerous, but the sudden stop.

Landing on Mars requires a different architecture, such as the Mars Science Laboratory's

sky-crane,

because of the pesky, thin atmosphere on the Red Planet.

Read our previous article with Rob Manning of JPL about the issues of landing large payloads on Mars.

Sources:

Huntsville Times

,

Gizmodo

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com