Development of a Marslander with crushable shock absorber by virtual and experimental testing

Since the beginning of space exploration, probes have been sent to other planets or moons with the associated challenge of landing on these bodies. For a soft landing several damping methods like landing legs or airbags have been used. A new and potentially less complex and lighter way to reduce the shock loads at touchdown is the use of a crushable shield underneath the lander platform. This crushable shield could be made for example out of an energy absorbing materials like an aluminum honeycomb core with a High Performance Polyethylene cover sheet. The design is particularly advantageous since no moving parts nor other mechanisms are required, thus making the shield very robust and fail safe. The only mission that has used this technique is the ESA/Roscosmos-mission “ExoMars” which started in 2016. The development of such a crushable shock absorber implies and requires assessment of materials, manufacturing processes, the setup of a numerical simulation and the experimental validation in a test lab. In an independent research project (Marslander) a representative engineering mockup of the landing platform has been built and tested at the Landing & Mobility Test Facility (LAMA) to support the numerical simulation model with experimental data. This paper is focusing on the hardware tests. Results of the above stated development and testing processes will be presented and discussed.