The CST 100 space capsule mockup with airbags deployed (Credits: Boeing).
Boeing and Bigelow Aerospace have recently conducted a series of successful air bag drop tests for the Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 mock capsule. Boeing is developing its capsule under the framework of Commercial Crew Development (CCDev)-2, which is aimed at restoring US human space capability to LEO and the ISS by 2016. Airbags, which have never been used for human spaceflight, have been used successfully as part of the landing gear of martian rovers Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity.
![A trajectory analysis that used a computational fluid dynamics approach to determine the likely position and velocity histories of the foam (Credits: NASA Ref [1] p61).](http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/fluid-dynamics-trajectory-analysis-50x50.jpg)
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