Academic

DEPLOYING THE LARGEST MARS PARACHUTE EVER. ?When the NASA Mars Science Laboratory rover lands on Ma?

By Glenn Reynolds

DEPLOYING THE LARGEST MARS PARACHUTE EVER. “When the NASA Mars Science Laboratory rover lands on Mars in 2012, it will face a unique obstacle: With an Earth weight of nearly a ton (compared to about 400 pounds for previous Mars rovers) and a Mars weight of about 750 pounds, it is too massive for any existing space parachute. So to cushion its fall through the thin Martian atmosphere (which is less than 1 percent as dense as Earth?s), NASA engineers had to come up with something really big. The new parachute opens to a diameter of 52 feet, making it twice the size of any parachute ever flown beyond Earth.”

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on June 11, 2009 (boomark / email).