Testing during March and April 2009 inside the world's largest wind
tunnel, at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., qualified the
parachute for NASA's next Mars rover.
The parachute for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, to be launched
in 2011 and land on Mars in 2012, is the largest ever built to fly on an
extraterrestrial mission.
This image shows the qualification-test parachute beginning to open a few
seconds after it was launched from a mortar into an 80-mile-per-hour
(36-meter-per-second) wind.
The parachute uses a configuration called disk-gap-band. It has 80
suspension lines, measures more than 50 meters (165 feet) in length, and
opens to a diameter of nearly 16 meters (51 feet). Most of the orange and
white fabric is nylon, though a small disk of heavier polyester is used
near the vent in the apex of the canopy due to higher stresses there.
Pioneer Aerospace, South Windsor, Conn., built the parachutes for testing
and for flying on the Mars Science Laboratory. The wind tunnel used for
the testing is part of the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex,
operated by the Arnold Engineering Development Center of the U.S. Air
Force. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., is building and
testing the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft for the NASA Science
Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL is a division of the California
Institute of Technology.