Questions tagged [air-bag]
Questions about the use of inflatable balloons to cushion landing of probes/exploration vehicles on planetary bodies.
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Why do the more recent landers across Mars and Moon not use the cushion approach?
I was wondering why the (relatively) recent Perseverance (USA), Chandrayaan-2,3 (India) and Luna-25 (Russia) don't leverage the advantage of the cushion based approach that Spirit, Opportunity, and ...
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Landing a 3-ton payload on the surface of Mars
I'm working on a university project about the construction of sustainable exploration camps on Mars. I want to land a 3-ton structure that will be used as a basis to build a shelter on the surface of ...
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Why have JPL martian rovers stopped using airbags and started using skycranes? [duplicate]
Pathfinder and the Mars Exploration Rovers used airbags to kill their terminal velocity. The Curiosity and Mars 2020 rovers have or will use skycranes. Why have JPL started using propulsive terminal ...
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How did the Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit & Opportunity) land upright? [duplicate]
In every animation depicting the landing of the MERs, the tetrahedral airbag compartment is bouncing & tumbling after surface contact. How did Spirit & Oppy ensure they would come to rest ...
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Could a shuttle be built for Mars?
Mars does have an atmosphere, but is there enough atmosphere to glide, shed speed and land if there was a runway? What would this require from the shuttle, in terms of aerodynamics?
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Why is an airbag landing on the moon not viable?
In this related question, it was explained that the differences in design between a Mars rover and moon rover were too substantial to substitute one for another. One of the points made was that the ...
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How did the spirit rover land right way up after bouncing
After watching an animation of how the Spirit rover landed on Mars, I was wondering how the rover managed to end up the right way up after bouncing around?
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What is the "airbag" on the roof of the Mars rover in 'The Martian'?
When I was watching The Martian I really couldn't make a clue of this thing.
And sadly all in the film that was stated about it (at least in the language version I watched) was, because they thought ...
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What are the disadvantages of parachute+airbag for atmospheric landing, versus rocket-based?
After Sojourner success, repeated by Spirit and Opportunity, it seemed like we had developed a fail-proof system for atmospheric landing for our probes: there's very little that can go wrong with the ...
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