Supersonic parachutes get upgrade, NASA conducts flight tests

NASA is advancing the reliability and safety of supersonic parachutes used for delivering scientific instruments and payloads to Mars through a series of flight tests led by the EPIC (Enhancing Parachutes by Instrumenting the Canopy) team. These tests, conducted at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, involved air-launching a capsule from a drone that deployed a parachute equipped with flexible, strain-measuring sensors. The sensors successfully collected data without interfering with the parachute canopy, validating the team's approach and providing valuable information for refining computer models and future tests. The parachute system, developed by NASA’s Langley Research Center with support from Armstrong interns, builds on previous supersonic parachute technology used during the Perseverance Mars Rover landing in 2021. That parachute, measuring 65 feet in diameter, deployed at hypersonic speeds and endured extreme aerodynamic forces. NASA’s ongoing work aims to improve numerical simulations of parachute inflation dynamics, which are complex due to