SCIENCE · AI-ASSISTED SUMMARY
NASA Successfully Demonstrates Technology for Safe and Precise Planetary Landings
WHY IT MATTERS
This technology has the potential to enable safe and precise landings on the Moon and Mars, which is critical for future NASA missions. The SPLICE system will be available in the NASA software catalog this fall, and industry partners are already evaluating its navigation capabilities for precision landing applications.
What happened
NASA has successfully demonstrated the Safe and Precise Landing – Integrated Capabilities Evolution (SPLICE) experiment, a guidance and navigation system designed to help spacecraft land precisely and detect potential hazards on the Moon and other planets. The system uses advanced guidance to map terrain and assess landing areas, and can divert to a safer location if necessary.
Researchers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston developed SPLICE, which was tested on an Alta-X drone near NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.
The flight took place on August 27 and verified communications, data handling, telemetry, and command-control performance between the SPLICE payload and the drone.
LINKED SOURCES
NASA Navigation Experiment Shows Promise for Planetary Landings
NASA · Dede Dinius · NASA media usage guidelines; third-party material excluded
THELAST.NEWS is published by Dmitry Yakushev, Cyprus. Briefs are prepared with the help of AI from linked sources and are not individually reviewed by a human editor unless marked otherwise.