Curiosity fifa coins also had a relatively

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Curiosity fifa coins also had a relatively large landing ellipse. That is,researchers could be reasonably sure where the rover would touchdown, but only within an ellipse seven by kilometres. Imagine ifa human descent vehicle touched down on Mars and then theastronauts' supplies came down km away. It would be quite aschlep just to go pick up your extra oxygen.

The next generation of landers will need accuracy on the orderof hundreds of metres and make sure they don't come down on top ofsome other vital piece of equipment, like a nuclear powerplant.

Scientists at Nasa are currently working on hypersonic inflatable systems. These are basically giganticballoon-like objects that would expand and stiffen to becomesomething like a super-rigid parachute, helping to slow a landingvehicle down. But the key technology to landing people on Mars issomething called supersonic retropropulsion.