NASA's Mars Mission Shields Up for Tests

  • Released Wednesday, October 12th, 2022
  • Updated Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023 at 11:43AM
  • ID: 14219

Mars Sample Return is a multi-mission campaign designed to retrieve scientifically selected samples of rock and sediment that the Perseverance rover is collecting on the surface of Mars. Bringing those samples to Earth would allow scientist to study them using the most advance laboratory instruments-those that will exist in the coming decade and those in the decades to follow. The campaign is one of the most ambitious endeavors in spaceflight history, involving multiple spacecraft, multiple launches, and multiple government agencies. Goddard is currently designing and developing the Capture, Containment, and Return System that would deliver the Mars sample tubes back to Earth.

Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.

Music is "Tumbleweed" by Paul Osborne, "Old as the Hills" by Matthieu Ouaki, and "Texas Moon" by Anders Johan Greger Lewen of Universal Production Music.

Set far away from residents and surrounded by dunes, the Remote Hypervelocity Test Laboratory at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico, has supported every human spaceflight program from the Space Shuttle to Artemis. A team designing shields to protect NASA's Mars Earth Entry System from micrometeorites and space debris traveled to this facility to safely recreate dangerous impacts, and to test the team’s shields and computer models.

Credits

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NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center