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25 Space Facts That Will Both Terrify And Amaze You | List25 The Speed of Light The Moon Black Holes Gamma Rays Zero Gravity Cold Welding Alien Life Rogue Planets Travel Times Extreme Temperatures The Darkness Magnetars Musculoskeletal Atrophy Venus Dark Matter/Dark Energy Background Radiation The Expanding Sun Hypernovae Electromagnetic Vibrations Everything Can Kill You Time Dilation Hypervelocity Stars Solar Flares Depressurization The Big Crunch/Big Rip

We’re testing a new way of landing on Mars… by crashing into its surface. The Simplified High Impact Energy Landing Device (SHIELD) is a lander concept being tested at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). It could one day provide a new way for low-cost missions to land on Mars. Rather than rely on parachutes or retrorockets, SHIELD would include a collapsible, accordion-like base to absorb the energy of a landing. A full-size prototype of the base was tested on Aug. 12, 2022. The prototype was hurled at the ground from the top of a nearly 90-foot-tall (27-meter-tall) drop tower at JPL. A steel plate ensured the impact was even harder than what would be experienced on Mars. The design worked: After crushing against the steel plate at 110 mph (177 kph), several electronic components inside the SHIELD prototype, including a smartphone, survived the impact. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/California Academy of Sciences

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