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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Watch closely as NASA deploys the world's biggest parachute at supersonic speeds

NASA engineers have launched a gigantic parachute as big as a size of a house[sic] at record speed to prepare for its Mars 2020 mission.

The object, dubbed ASPIRE (Advanced Supersonic Parachute Inflation Research Experiments), unfolded from a small cylinder to a massive parachute, weighing over 80 kilograms (180 pounds), in just four-tenths of a second.

ASPIRE was tested earlier this year in September. NASA hopes that it can be used to slow down a spacecraft carrying the Mars 2020 rover so that the vehicle can slow in the upper atmosphere. The parachute will then detach and the spacecraft will fire up rockets, hover over the surface and then lower the rover to the surface of the Red Planet.

[...] The parachute was carried aboard a Black Brant IX sounding rocket travelling at nearly twice the speed of sound (343 meters per second). After two minutes, the rocket reached the appropriate altitude of 38 kilometers - where the atmosphere of Earth thins and mimics the one on Mars - and released the parachute.

[...] In one swift expansion, it created a drag force of a whopping 311,375 Newtons (70,000 pounds of force). ASPIRE's canopy stretches over 20 meters in diameter and is made out of nylon and Kevlar. It's held together by over three million stitches and carried by threads of Technora, a strong synthetic fibre.

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