New Landing Approach for Mars Missions

[bison]

Plans for much heavier missions to Mars run up against the limits of what can be done with parachutes and the expense and weight of larger retrorockets. A new technique has been proposed to allow landing heavier payloads with rockets of a given size.

The plan is to enter Mars' lower atmosphere at a steeper angle, so it can provide more braking, then firing the retrorockets nearer the planet's surface, than is currently done. Please find a link to an article with further details, below:

https://www.universetoday.com/141485/land-heavier-payloads-on-mars-aim-for-the-ground-and-then-pull-up-at the-last-moment 

Edited February 16, 2019 by bison