As NASA prepares for more missions beyond our planet, a lot can go wrong.
But for NASA, these rocks are huge.a source of potential disruption to spacecraft, such as the future Mars sample return mission. These dust particles are known to scientists as micrometeoroids, and at a remote facility in New Mexico, NASA is testing new ways to protect spacecraft carrying Martian surface samples.
“NASA White Sands is a remote testthe facility that the agency uses for some of the most dangerous testing needed to support NASA missions,” said Marcus Sandy, manager of the White Sands test facility in New Mexico.
Hyperspeed Remote Testing Laboratorylocated in White Sands and equipped with a 69-meter cannon. The gun is powered by compressed hydrogen and is capable of firing small pellets through a vacuum at speeds up to 6.7 m/s, a speed you can get from New York to San Francisco in about five minutes. According to NASA, engineers spent three days setting up a one-second experiment that aims to simulate what would happen if a NASA spacecraft hit a micrometeoroid during a flight to or from Mars.
"The purpose of the mission is to seehow well do these materials withstand these impacts to make sure we don't compromise our sample storage," said Russ Stein, NASA lead product design for the Mars Sample Return mission.
While the pellets fired from the cannonmoving at an incredibly high speed, the micrometeoroids that saturate space are moving about six times faster - about 80 km / s. Figuring out what designs and materials are best suited to protecting Earth-bound Mars' precious samples is critical to our ability to study - and perhaps even travel - to the Red Planet.
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