Do you need a heat shield to land on Duna?

The title says it all.

A big heavy heat shield will mean a whole lot of wasted delta-v if it's not required to re-enter on Duna. With Duna's low gravity and hence low orbital speed, combined with sparse atmosphere, is a heat shield necessary?

Re-entry on Duna

kerbal-space-program

Pictures about "Do you need a heat shield to land on Duna?"

Do you need a heat shield to land on Duna? - Cracked dry ground in desert area

Do you need a heat shield to land on Duna? - From below of pure blue sky with clouds over empty endless desert landscape with wheels and shoes tracks on surface

Do you need a heat shield to land on Duna? - Bare Tree on Desert

How do you land on Duna?

If you're at orbital altitude but slow enough, descent on a parachute will be safe. It's the aerobraking against the orbital speed that does most of the damage.

Can you land on Duna with parachutes?

Although parachutes will deploy on Duna, the atmosphere is so thin that they are usually unable to slow a craft to a safe landing velocity and must be assisted with engines.

Can you use parachutes on Duna KSP?

You will need at least 2000ms Delta-V for the orbit and return, you can test this by seeing if your lander is **almost** capable of reaching Kerbin orbit by itself.

Duna landing no heat shield

Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Images: Mostafa El Shershaby, Julia Volk, RF._.studio, Mohamed Elshawry