NASA has used a lot of different methods to get its rovers to land on the surface of Mars.
The same principle that keeps car passengers safe during a collision is being applied to the agency's new approach.
The simplified high impact energy landing device is a clever device that could allow us to send rovers.
The base of SHIELD would act like the crumple zone of a car and absorb the energy of a hard impact.
To test out the new approach, NASA dropped electronics at more than 100 miles per hour from a tower and into a full-sized mock-up of SHIELD's attenuator.
JPL said the experiment was a smashing success.
According to the post, the only hardware that was damaged were some plastic components.
JPL believes that using this technology could make Mars landings cheaper by making the entry, descent, and landing process simpler.
We wouldn't want to put a billion-dollar rover with our current landing systems, so we think we could go to more dangerous areas. We might be able to get several of these at difficult-to-access locations to build a network.
The technology could have far-reaching implications.
SHIELD could work on planets or moons with denser atmospheres if we could land on Mars.
NASA just shot tiny bullets at its Mars space craft.
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