NASA’s Mars Lander Will Launch A Rocket & It’s Being Tested Right Now
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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has started to test the legs and footpads of the largest lander to be sent to Mars in history. The space agency has been busy collecting Martian rocket samples through the Perseverance rover that landed on the red planet amidst much fanfare a few years back in 2021. However, returning these rock samples to Earth is a completely different task since Perseverance cannot fly out independently. To retrieve them, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) will fly a new lander to Mars equipped with a rocket to blast the samples off to space and allow teams on Earth to analyze them upon return.
While NASA is currently focusing its efforts on the Artemis program, which aims to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon, this program is a part of the agency's broader efforts toward Mars exploration. The Artemis program will be the stepping stone to future Mars missions, as it will provide astronauts and the space agency with the necessary experience of living and working in space before the long-duration Mars missions can take place.
As part of these efforts, NASA will evaluate the rock samples gathered by the Perseverance rover on Earth since the lab machines can not easily be sent to the Martian surface. The Mars Sample Retrieval Lander will bring these samples to Earth, and engineers are already testing this lander's landing legs and footpads at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
These legs are crucial to the lander's design since they will allow it to absorb the impact of a landing and ensure that the vehicle is in
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