A team of researchers brought a pair of scale model space capsules to the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to try out a rotor system that could be used in place of parachutes on returning spacecraft.
The design would give a capsule the stability and control of a helicopter, but would not be powered. Instead, the wind passing over the rotors as the capsule descends would make the blades turn, a process called auto-rotation that has been proven repeatedly on helicopters but never tried on spacecraft.
The intent is to give real spacecraft a soft landing with enough control that they could touch down anywhere in the world, whether it be a runway or the top of a building. In other words, wherever a helicopter could land, a spacecraft could land, too.
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