Lightweight landing legs for Mars Sample Return lander

Even though this technology was used in the Apollo Programme and in several earlier Russian and American planetary missions, in Europe there is limited experience to date on such devices. The only large landing capsule developed in Europe, the Atmospheric Re-entry Demonstrator (ARD), performed a sea landing.

Mastering this landing technology will enable the implementation of a soft landing technique. This would be a first step towards the development of a similar technology for future human missions (with a much higher landing mass than MSR).

The possible use of composite materials for load carrying landing leg components could also allow a series of projected technically and economically based advantages in terms of weight saving, production cost reduction. Resin transfer molding systems with braiding and filament winding on metallic liners are suggested as potentially mass attractive solutions for the manufacture of retractable landing legs required for a MSR lander.

The following steps will be addressed:

• Design of landing legs taking into account the requirements of the Aurora Mars Sample Return mission
• Selection of materials
• Development of a breadboard of such a landing device
• Testing in a relevant environment of the breadboard

The intended study activities will at least include the following:

• Definition of the requirements starting from the overall mission requirements
• Interface/relationships with the other elements of the descent and landing system
• Structural design of the legs
• Design of the deployment mechanism
• Design of the sensors for deployment
• Selection of materials for the shock absorbing part
• Sample testing for the shock absorbing technology
• Breadboard design
• Breadboard impact and deployment testing