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Reduced Gravity Landing Research Vehicle Design, Sarah Isert

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Human and robotic missions beyond low earth orbit (LEO) are key components of NASA's currently emerging strategy for space exploration. These missions will inevitably include humancrewed lunar and planetary surface landings. Trips to near-earth asteroids are also in the incipient planning stages. A permanent presence on the surface of an extra terrestrial body like Mars or the Moon will require many landings by both human-crewed and robotic spacecraft.

Planetary and lunar surface landings are inherently dangerous undertakings, and successful landings are indeed rare events. Since the end of the Apollo era with the completion of the Apollo 17 mission in …