NASA Tests Supersonic Parachute to Land the Mars Rover and Breaks World Record
Watch as NASA tests a new parachute for landing the Mars 2020 rover on the Red Planet. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Advanced Supersonic Parachute Inflation Research Experiment (ASPIRE) project conducted a series of sounding rocket tests to help decide which parachute design to use on the Mars 2020 mission. On September 7, 2018, NASA’s ASPIRE project broke a world record when its rocket-launched parachute deployed in 4-10ths of a second — the fastest inflation of this size parachute in history. It created a peak load of almost 70,000 pounds of force.