Mars Rover Examines Heat Shield

NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity is taking a close look at the heat shield it jettisoned during its fiery descent Jan. 24.

“The reason for looking at these things is to design for future missions and make them safer,” Ethiraj Venkatapathy, technology manager for planetary exploration at NASA’s Ames Research Center, said this week. “With the heat shield, you have one chance. If it fails, the whole mission comes to an end.”

This marks the first time scientists have been able to conduct a close-up inspection of a shield that has landed on another planet.

Opportunity’s shield, a cone 8 feet in diameter, withstood temperatures up to 2,700 degrees before it was jettisoned as planned. It was going about 300 mph when it hit the surface, and now it lies in pieces in the Martian dust.

Scientists particularly want to look closely at what used to be the outer skin of the shield, made of a lightweight material six-tenths of an inch thick.

Venkatapathy said that if the blackened skin was not burned through, future missions might be able to save money -- and reduce weight -- by using a thinner layer. He said the U.S. space program had never lost an interplanetary probe because of a heat shield failure. “We want to keep it that way,” he said.