NASA's parachute for Mars 2020 mission sets world record

Washington, Oct 29: The Mars 2020 parachute is a go after NASA broke the record for the fastest inflation in history of a parachute that size early in September.

180-pound parachute billowed out:

The third ASPIRE test took place in the early hours of September 7, when the 180-pound parachute billowed out form being a solid cylinder to full inflation in four-tenths of a second. The peak load of the nylon, Technora and Kevlar parachute reached almost 70,000 pounds of force during the test.

Mars 2020 project's parachute-testing series:

The Mars 2020 project's parachute-testing series, ASPIRE, is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with support from NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, for NASA's Space Science Mission Directorate. NASA's Sounding Rocket Program is based at the agency's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia. Northrop Grumman provides mission planning, engineering services and field operations through the NASA Sounding Rocket Operations Contract. NASA's Heliophysics Division manages the sounding-rocket program for the agency.

NASA launched a 58-foot Black Brant IX sounding rocket

NASA launched a 58-foot Black Brant IX sounding rocket to Mach 1.8 to fully test the chute, which will play an integral part in landing the state-of-the-art Mars 2020 rover on the planet in February 2021.