NASA sets world record with parachute for Mars 2020 mission

NASA not only successfully tested a parachute to be used during its mission to Mars in 2020, but also broke a world record.

NASA set the record following the test of a parachute that she plans to use to help the agency to land a rover on Mars in February 2021.

After detaching a payload from a 58-foot rocket, the sensors deployed a nylon fiber parachute, Technora and Kevlar. The parachute deploys when the payload reaches a certain height and speed when falling. The chute, weighing 180 pounds, was deployed in four tenths of a second, the fastest inflation ever made of a parachute of this size.

"March 2020 will carry the heaviest payload to the surface of Mars and, like all our previous missions on Mars, we have only one parachute and it has to work," he said. John McNamee, Project Manager, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. , in a report. "The ASPIRE tests have shown with remarkable precision the reaction of our parachute when it will be deployed for the first time in a supersonic flow over Mars."

The tests were part of NASA's ASPIRE project, or advanced research experiment on supersonic parachute inflation.