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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story [scitechdaily.com]:

 The Earth Entry System would contain the orbiting sample inside a disk-shaped vehicle with a heat shield for safe entry through the Earth’s atmosphere. Credit: NASA/GSFC

A potential hazard for any space mission, including NASA’s Mars Sample Return [nasa.gov], is micrometeorites. These tiny rocks can travel up to 50 miles per second (180,000 mph). At these extreme speeds, “even dust could cause damage to a spacecraft,” said Bruno Sarli, NASA engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Sarli leads a team designing shields to protect NASA’s Mars Earth Entry System [nasa.gov] from micrometeorites and space debris. To test the team’s shields and computer models, he recently traveled to a NASA lab, designed to safely recreate dangerous impacts.

Set far away from residents and surrounded by dunes, the Remote Hypervelocity Test Laboratory [nasa.gov] at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility [nasa.gov] in Las Cruces, New Mexico, has supported every human spaceflight program from the Space Shuttle to Artemis. The lab also supports testing for the International Space Station (ISS), Commercial Crew, and Commercial Resupply programs.

Engineers spent three days preparing for an experiment that lasted just one second. They used the lab’s mid-sized high-pressure (50-caliber range) 2-stage light gas gun that shoots small pellets at speeds of 16,000 to 22,000 feet per second (11,000 to 15,000 mph). “At that speed, you could travel from San Francisco to New York in five minutes,” said Dennis Garcia, the .50-caliber test conductor at White Sands.

While the pellet’s speed is incredibly fast, micrometeorites actually travel six to seven times faster in space. As a result, the team relies on computer models to simulate the actual velocities of micrometeorites. The slower rate will test their computer model’s ability to simulate impacts on their shield designs and allows the research team to study the material reaction to such energy.

This illustration shows a concept for multiple robots that would team up to ferry to Earth samples collected from the Mars surface by NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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