LOCKHEED MARTIN UNVEILS REUSABLE LANDER FOR CREWED MARS MISSIONS

Image Credit: Lockheed Martin

 Aerospace company Lockheed Martin has recently announced new information regarding its Mars Base Camp plan, a join-international plan aimed at building a crewed space station in orbit around the Red Planet capable of long-term explorations of Mars. With the updates came new imagery of a sleek, single-stage surface lander called the Mars Ascent/Descent Vehicle (MADV).
 The MADV would lock in with the space station, and travel to and from the Martian surface via supersonic retropulsion fuelled by liquid hydrogen. Supersonic retropulusion is the same approach utilized by SpaceX to land its reusable Falcon 9 rocket boosters.
 The use of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as propellant is essential to the Mars Base Camp plan. While the initial fuel could be sourced from Earth, eventually water could be extracted from asteroids, the Moon's surface or even from the Mars system to create the liquid hydrogen fuel.
 "Base camps are not a destination unto themselves," said Rob Chambers, one of the Lockheed engineers who spoke at the conference. "They're a place from which you then set out — in this case, to descend to the surfaces of other worlds."
Read more about this fascinating story at: https://www.space.com/38306-lockheed-martin-reusable-mars-lander-unveiled.html

Image Credit: Lockheed Martin