posted 08-04-2017 12:25 AM               

From space plane to sky crane: How part of a space shuttle landed a rover on Mars

Hardware from one of NASA's retired space shuttle orbiters played a critical role in the landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars five years ago.

Largely unknown to the public, a helium regulator that first flew multiple times into Earth orbit as part of the propulsion system for the reusable winged spacecraft was inspected, modified, tested and then re-launched as a key component of the descent stage for the six-wheeled rover that touched down on the Red Planet on Aug. 5, 2012 (PDT or Aug. 6 EDT/GMT).

"We took part of a space shuttle and put it on Mars," said Masashi Mizukami, an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., in an email interview with collectSPACE.