Why NASA is planning to deliberately ‘crash’ future spacecraft on Mars

Before transferring to JPL, Mr Ćormarković worked for the automobile industry, using crash test dummies to explore how impacts affect road vehicles. In many of these tests, he explained, cars are placed on sleds that are accelerated to phenomenal speeds before being slammed into a wall or other kind of barrier.

Mr Ćormarković said: “The tests we’ve done for SHIELD are kind of like a vertical version of the sled tests. But instead of a wall, the sudden stop is due to an impact into the ground.”

Back in August 12 this year, NASA conducted a test in the drop tower of a full-sized prototype of SHIELD’s “collapsible attenuator” — an inverted pyramid of metal rings design to absorb the force of impact. SHIELD project member Nathan Barba said: “Hearing the countdown gave me goosebumps. The whole team was excited to see if the objects inside the prototype would survive the impact.”

To simulate the electronics that a real spacecraft would carry, the payload for the experiment included an accelerometer, a radio and a smartphone. The attenuator’s journey lasted but two seconds — slamming into the ground at a whopping 110 miles per hour, the same speed reached by a Mars lander as it approaches the surface, following the effect of atmospheric drag on its entry speed of 14,500 miles per hour.

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Article source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1687445/nasa-mars-crash-landing-shield-lander-spacecraft-sample-return-jpl