NASA Has Figured Out a New Way to Safely Land on the Moon
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:
NASA has figured out a new way to safely land on the Moon:
NASA has built a brand new system that could make landing on Moon and Mars a whole lot less risky - and it already has plans to test it out on an upcoming mission.
The agency's Safe and Precise Landing Integrated Capabilities Evolution (SPLICE) project aims to improve landing safety by combining a suite of laser sensors, a camera, a high-speed computer, and some sophisticated algorithms - all of which, it says, is capable of foregoing the need for a human pilot.
"What we're building is a complete descent and landing system that will work for future Artemis missions to the Moon and can be adapted for Mars," project manager Ron Sostaric said in a NASA statement. "Our job is to put the individual components together and make sure that it works as a functioning system."
The system could allow for landers to touch down on a much wider variety of sites, including near boulders or craters. It can also identify safe target areas that are only half the size of a football field.
To put that into perspective, the landing area for Apollo 11 in 1968 was about 11 by three miles.
YouTube video.
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