Jane Edwards
SpaceX has started to collaborate with NASA to determine potential landing sites for the firm’s Red Dragon space vehicle and future manned missions on Mars, Space News reported Monday.
Jeff Foust writes Paul Wooster, spacecraft guidance, navigation and control systems manager at SpaceX, said at a symposium held Saturday in Texas that SpaceX and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory pinpointed four regions in Mars’ northern hemisphere that met several criteria for landing.
Those regions include Deuteronilus Mensae, Utopia Planitia, Phlegra Montes and Arcadia Planiti.
Some of the criteria that SpaceX and JPL used to locate those potential landing locations include access to large volumes of ice, proximity to the Equator, thermal conditions and low elevation for solar power, Foust noted.
The identification of potential sites for landing comes nearly a year after NASA announced plans to use SpaceX’s Red Dragon to send payloads to Mars.
