Heat shield in Mars mission $ 2 billion cracked

The heat shield is designed to protect NASA's adventurous vehicle in trouble during testing.

A crack appeared on the heat shield of the new Mars exploration vehicle scheduled to launch into space in July 2020, NPR reported on April 27. The shield is designed to protect NASA cars into the red planet atmosphere.

NASA intends to take the explorer car with a protective shield landing on the red planet.(Photo: NASA / JPL-Caltech).

In the experiment, the shield was subjected to a 20% greater impact than expected when passing through the Martian atmosphere, NASA said. Cracks occur unexpectedly and engineers will have to build another shield.

The new Mars exploration vehicle is a 6-wheel vehicle whose mission is to look for signs of life. This is one of the first steps to prepare for the task of taking specimens on the red planet to the future research Earth.

The heat shield is a dome-shaped structure made primarily of a light material that can withstand a temperature of about 2,200 degrees Celsius when the explorer enters the Martian atmosphere. This is also the material used on SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft.

Engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is working with Lockheed Martin, the company responsible for making heat shields, to find out the cause of the crack. Survey results may lead to changes when designing a new shield.

NASA has not yet made an estimated cost for replacing heat shields. However, this agency affirmed that it will complete the replacement to carry out the mission of exploring Mars in accordance with the plan in 2020. The estimated cost for this task is more than 2 billion USD.