Sentences with word «retrorocket»

For the last 20 metres of its trip to the surface, Curiosity was slowly lowered on three nylon tethers from a hovering descent vehicle, held in place by retrorockets.

Spacecraft screaming along at many thousands of kilometers per hour have to hit the brakes hard, firing retrorockets to swing into orbit.

Then eight retrorockets roared to life, slowing the vehicle to an eventual stop for the ambitious Sky Crane manoeuvre.

That technology relies on retrorockets at supersonic speeds to decelerate the vehicle as it travels through an atmosphere.

Curiosity glimpsed its first conglomerate at the landing site, where retrorocket engines dusted off the planet's reddish veneer and revealed the speckled bedrock beneath.

One of these technologies is supersonic retropropulsion — the use of retrorockets to slow a craft as it blazes into the Red Planet's upper atmosphere at supersonic speeds.

The techniques now available to soft - land a craft on Mars — using large parachutes, airbags, and small retrorockets, among others — can only handle payloads of 1 to 1.5 metric tons, but «human missions will need to carry about 20 times that,» Reuter notes.

A proposed SpaceX mission to Mars, called Red Dragon, would offer NASA data about how the lander's retrorockets (depicted in this artist's concept) interact with the planet's surface.

Schiaparelli was programmed to autonomously perform an automated landing sequence, with parachute deployment and front heat shield release between 11 and 7 km, followed by a retrorocket braking starting at 1100 m from the ground, and a final fall from a height of 2 m protected by a crushable structure.