Future European space missions have been and are being discussed which
involve the landing of scientific payloads on the surfaces of planets
or comets in the Solar System, including Mars, Titan, the Moon and sm
aller remote comets, For all of these missions - Marsnet, Intermarsnet
, Ares, Rosetta, Euromoon, etc, - the landing subsystem is a critical
element in that a single-point failure could jeopardise the success of
the whole mission, Several studies have therefore been performed to i
nvestigate potential landing devices and strategies, including the des
cent, impact, and post-impact stability and operation phases, They hav
e shown that the acceleration peaks transferred to the lander structur
e during impact can be significantly higher than expected, resulting i
n major risks to the integrity of the scientific payload, This article
reviews work that has been performed in this domain as part of the Ag
ency's Technology Research Programme (TRP).