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mars 2020 rover

The Mars 2020 rover project is in total swing at NASA, and the agency has chosen to base the new rover on the phenomenally successful Marvel design. That means the rover needs to wearisome down in the Martian temper before engaging its rocket-based landing system. NASA has merely completed the starting time real-world examination of the supersonic parachute that'll help the rover do that.

When the 2020 rover enters Mars' atmosphere, it'll be moving at over 12,000 mph (5.4 kilometers per second), and it'll weigh effectually 2,000 pounds like curiosity. You need a big parachute to deadening something like that downward, and the problem is much more circuitous on Mars. Earth's temper is much denser than Mars, so the parachute needs to be actress large to produce enough drag. Lower atmospheric force per unit area too changes the way parachutes deploy, and that was the focus of the starting time test.

Earth isn't Mars, but there are however means to test parts of the 2020 mission in the real globe. The behavior of the chute can exist tested at high altitudes where pressure is lower. These tests are now underway in a program known every bit the Advanced Supersonic Parachute Inflation Enquiry Experiment (ASPIRE). In the just-completed commencement trial, a pocket-sized Blackness Brant 9 rocket was launched from NASA Goddard Space Flight Middle's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The rocket reached Mach three equally it ascended to an altitude of virtually 31 miles (fifty kilometers), where the offset stage dropped off.

The only payload for this launch was the parachute, which was triggered equally the rocket's second stage began dipping dorsum down into the temper. The mechanism activated when it reached an altitude of 26 miles. Atmospheric density at that place is similar to Mars, then it's a improve test of the supersonic parachute.

The 100-pound parachute fired from the rocket at nearly 100 miles per 60 minutes. The rocket was nonetheless moving at one.8 times the speed of sound (near i,300 mph) as the parachute fully deployed, generating more than 35,000 pounds of drag forcefulness. A high-speed camera filmed the whole affair at 1,000 frames per second. You can see that footage slowed down at the cease of the video higher up. The rocket splashed downward in the Atlantic Ocean a mere 35 minutes after launch where NASA recovered information technology.

NASA engineers will go over the ASPIRE footage frame-past-frame to study how the parachute behaved during deployment. This design is similar to the parachute used for the Curiosity landing in 2012, but NASA plans to develop an fifty-fifty stronger version of this parachute. That eventual system will become office of the last 2020 mission design.