NASA has begun testing the landing legs and pads of the largest Mars lander ever. A few years back, in 2021, the Perseverance rover landed on the Red Planet, and NASA has been busy collecting Mars rocket samples via the Perseverance rover. Returning these rock samples to Earth, however, is an entirely different task because Perseverance cannot fly on its own. To retrieve these samples, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) will send a new lander to Mars,

The lander, equipped with multiple rocket engines and weighing more than two tons, will first launch samples from Mars into space, and then let teams on Earth analyze the samples when they return.

NASA is currently focused on the implementation of Project Artemis, which aims to establish a permanent human presence on the moon. The Artemis program will be a stepping stone for future missions to Mars, as it will provide astronauts and the space agency with the necessary experience to live and work in space before embarking on long-duration missions to Mars.

As part of these efforts, NASA will evaluate rock samples taken by the Persistence rover on Earth, as laboratory machines are not easily transported to the Martian surface. The Mars Sample retrieval lander will bring those samples to Earth, and engineers are already testing the lander's landing legs and foot pads at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

These legs are crucial to the lander's design, as they allow it to absorb the impact of landing and ensure that the vehicle is in working condition after landing. The stability of the platform is crucial to its operation, as it will also act as a mobile rocket launch site once it lands on Mars.

NASA tests a 16-inch diameter foot pad for its Mars lander at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Putting a rocket on a lander is a unique idea, but it's the only way NASA can recover Martian soil samples. The lander will launch these samples into Mars orbit, where the orbiter will collect them and bring them to Earth. In NASA's words, the Mars rocket will be operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) as part of the agency's Mars Sample Return program.

Compared to the complex engines of rockets like NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) and SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, the Mars rocket is a simple, two-stage, solid-fuel rocket. SLS rocket boosters, as well as ballistic and other missiles, use solid fuel. The rover will travel at 2.5 miles per second and will reach Mars orbit ten minutes after launch. Due to gravitational differences, the rocket will weigh 169 kilograms on Mars, compared to 450 kilograms on Earth.

The Mars lander will also be equipped with rocket engines, 12 to be exact. These engines, which will be crucial to reducing the lander's speed when it lands, will work with foot pads and landing legs that are being tested at JPL. It weighs 2,275 kilograms on Earth, including its rocket. This makes it the heaviest vehicle ever to land on the surface of Mars. To effectively recover rock samples, the lander had to land within 60 meters of the target site.

Among the issues being studied by the JPL team are wobbly legs, which can cause trouble during actual landing. It is currently scheduled to launch in 2028, with samples retrieved in the early 2030s.