Mueller said the size and shape of the capsule will be the same as that used in the InSight mission. “It’s like using the same type of heat shield material, exactly the same parachute design,” he said. “That is, we’re just using what NASA has already done a lot of analysis and proved in every mission of this size that went well on Mars.”
The lander is about the same size as the InSight, but lighter, Mueller said. The basic configuration doesn’t even include solar panels and won’t run for long periods of time until the battery runs out.
Mueller said Impulse began talking to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California this year. This institute manages the InSight mission.
However, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory spokesman said there wasn’t much work left between the lab and the impulse. “There seems to have been some preliminary discussions with Impulse on this,” said spokesman Andrew Good. “But they wanted to meet us this year, but the meeting hasn’t happened yet.”
Eric Ianson, director of NASA’s Mars exploration program, said through a spokeswoman at NASA’s headquarters that NASA had never communicated directly with Impulse and had no insight into what the company was trying to do.
The theory of relativity is not the only private space company to announce planetary exploration missions.
In 2020, Rocket Lab said it plans to fly a small ship in 2023 to fly Venus and drop the probe to see if there are any signs of life in the thick atmosphere.It also has A discreet NASA deal to launch two small orbiters on Mars As early as 2024. However, Rocket Lab has already successfully launched a small electron rocket 25 times, and last month sent another NASA-funded small mission, CAPSTONE, to the Moon. (Scheduled to arrive in November).
A few years ago, SpaceX also had a modest Martian plan, which was later abandoned.
In 2016, the company announced that a version of the crew dragon astronaut capsule with no passengers would move to the surface of Mars in 2018. In 2017, SpaceX canceled these plans, called Red Dragons, after the change. Capsule design that scatters into the sea instead of landing on land using a rocket engine. (Water landing does not work on Mars, where there is no flowing water.)
