NASA Tests Rotor Landing For Capsules To Replace Parachute

With NASA's growing ambitions to conquer the space and all the planets out there, engineers are looking to develop newer and better methods of making the capsules land anywhere on the planet. The current aim seems to be replacing the parachutes and the latest advancement in the direction is the rotor landing system developed by NASA's engineers. One prototype was recently tested at the vehicle assembly building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. What's the big deal? Well the system does not need any power and uses the wind passing over the rotors to gain the stability and manoeuvrability of the helicopter.



The technique has been proven for a long time in helicopters and is called "auto-rotation" but was not used in spacecrafts so far. The engineers were trying to get the rotor to spin as the capsule descends. The experiment involved a 2 pound capsule hung about 480 ft above a concrete floor. With the radio control, the engineers adjusted the rotors' pitch to make it fall about 4x slower. The technique can be used in making the real aircrafts land almost anywhere in the world without needing the parachute.

The next step in testing the capsule with the new landing rotors is to use it to get fragile samples from the International Space Station. Check out further coverage of the topic on NASA on following source link -

Source: NASA - Engineers Test Rotor Landing for Capsules