The goal of the project is to explore the surface of Mars and search for potential traces of extraterrestrial life
TASS, November 19. The new version of the parachute for the Russian Kazachok landing platform and the Rosalind Franklin Rover of the ExoMars mission passed all field tests, successfully braking and lowering the test mass to the Ground after being dropped from a height of 29 km. This was announced on Wednesday by the press service of the European space Agency (ESA).
"Landing on Mars is an extremely difficult task, the solution of which does not allow the possibility of making any mistakes. As these tests have shown, we have made significant progress in solving this problem, but we have not yet reached perfection, "said Francois Spoto, one of the co-heads of the ExoMars program at ESA, quoted by the press service of the space Agency.
ExoMars is a joint program of the European space Agency and Roscosmos to explore Mars, consisting of two projects-the ExoMars-TGO probe and the Rosalind Franklin Rover. The first spacecraft arrived safely in the orbit of Mars in October 2016, and over the following years it has made many interesting discoveries related to the properties of the planet's atmosphere.
The launch of the second half of the mission was originally scheduled for 2018, but later the launch of the European Rover and the Russian landing platform Kazachok was postponed to 2020 and 2022. They are planned to be sent to space using a proton-M launch vehicle with a Briz-M upper stage from the Baikonur cosmodrome. The goal of the project is to explore the surface of Mars and search for potential traces of extraterrestrial life.
New parachute for the Rover
One of the reasons for this transfer was that the Kazachka and Rosalind Franklin landing systems were not fully tested due to the worldwide coronavirus pandemic. The need for such tests was due to the fact that in August last year, the layout of the landing platform and the Rover crashed while testing the first version of the parachutes of the second half of ExoMars, which took place on the territory of the Swedish Esrange missile range.
The new version of the parachutes, reinforced with Kevlar and equipped with a new bag, was supposed to be tested in March 2020 in the United States, but these tests did not take place due to the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and were postponed until the fall of this year after the official postponement of the mission launch to September 2022.
Last week, scientists managed to conduct these tests by lifting the mock-up of the Rover and landing platform to a height of 29 km and dropping them from the side of the stratostat. Subsequent observations showed that the parachutes successfully opened and helped the test mass to gently descend to the surface of the test site located in Oregon.
According to Spoto, scientists will conduct another test of the landing system in the middle of next year at the Esrange test site. These tests will use a new version of the second main parachute of ExoMars, and the main parachute will undergo a series of small upgrades that will help scientists eliminate some small problems recorded during tests in the United States.
These tests, as the project participants hope, will help them to protect the Rover and landing platform as much as possible when they enter the extremely rarefied atmosphere of Mars and safely deliver them to the surface of the planet in June 2023.
