Who made the Parachute of NASA's Mars 2020 spacecraft? and how it helped for safe and smooth landing on red planet?

Credit:- NASA

The Parachute traveled  742 million km with lander and rover. To slowdown  the descent entry to the red planet. It was designed and tested at NASA's Jet propulsion laboratory southern California. The design of the Parachute is driven by loads. The forces the Parachute experiences as it is fully inflates. Loads are calculated by using atmospheric density, velocity, Parachute drag area & mass.

The Parachute used for this mission was 40% larger than the Pathfinder.

Design

The material used to design must be strong & lightweight enough to fit inside a very small area. It was made with two durable lightweight fabrics  Polyester and Nylon. It has a triple tethers that connects the Parachute to the bach shell. This tethers is made out of Kevlar the same material used in bullet proof vests.

How it worked?

First the Parachute is deployed at an altitude of about 10km above the martial surface. Next heat shield is released using 6 separation nuts & push off spring.

The lander than separates from the back shell and rappels down a metal tape on a centrifugal  braking system built into one of the lander petals.

The slow descent down the metal tape places the lander in position at the end of a nearly 20 meter long 65 foot long braided zylon.

The Parachute alone is not enough to ensure a safe low landing speed so Rocket assisted descent motors are used.

As the Mars atmospheric  density is less than the 1% of earth. Parachute and RAD brings the spacecraft to a dead stop 10-15 meter above the Martian surface. This is how Parachute helped the spacecraft to land on Martian surface.