Before astronauts land on Mars and take an even bigger step for mankind, they’ll need a little help from Hamilton on Earth.
NASA enlisted our dual-wheel, solid pneumatic casters to help build and test a new landing vehicle called the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD).
Hamilton’s 21-inch casters with dual-tread contact brakes helped safely transport the precious cargo into place for a test launch on June 28, 2014. Get a view of them at the 8-second mark and see them in action at 1:35.
With the LDSD’s supersonic technology, NASA can launch a crew-filled capsule from space into Mars. And, to compensate for the planet’s incredibly thin atmosphere, slow the vessel from speeds greater than the speed of sound to about 200 mph.
Mark Adler, project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, beamed over the test mission’s success.
“The test vehicle worked beautifully, and we met all of our flight objectives,” he said. “We’ve recovered all the vehicle hardware and data recorders and will be able to apply all of the lessons learned from this information to our future flights.”
To learn more about the test flight and future missions to Mars, jet on over to NASA.gov
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