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today is the 26th of April Thursday

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March rather March 26th and next week

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starting the 30th of March and through

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the first week of April we are doing

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some parachute tests up at Ames at the

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full-scale wind tunnel up there and

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we're doing our final campaign of

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parachute tests for the qualification of

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when the MSL spacecraft hits the

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atmosphere is going very fast

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fortunately the heat shield through

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friction with the atmosphere absorbs 98

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percent of all of that energy so we

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start off at 17,000 miles an hour then

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we can slow down to about 2,000 miles

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per hour that's the point where we have

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to open up the parachute tom is on Mars

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the atmosphere so thin that even at a

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thousand miles per hour we're not

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generating that much force so we need a

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really really really big parachute one

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of the most difficult things to do is to

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test the strength of the parachute the

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only way to do that is to actually

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inflate it either you drop from the

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helicopter or you put in a twin time we

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try dropping it from the helicopter but

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we were so big and it was just it was

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not a very elegant test so we abandon

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that we decided to go into the wind

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tunnel well we had to go to the world's

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largest wind tunnel in order to

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accommodate this big parachute the test

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section in his wind tunnel is 120 feet

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wide 80 feet high it's absolutely

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enormous

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so sounds pretty straightforward sells

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pretty easy but parachute testing is

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never without its surprise yeah wasn't

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sure what happened so when we got up

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there we built we built a few ruinous

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chutes we brought him up to the to a

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wind tunnel and we started testing them

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and sure enough we got what's called an

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inversion the parachute opened up inside

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out the parachute blue part basically so

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tunnels fine but the parachute is it's a

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loss not to see when we get when we do

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our full-scale analysis with definitely

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failed on that one side first

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once it filled in one place it was it

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was done lose it one place to lose the

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whole thing so we called it quits for

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that first test program and we convene

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and we're scratching our heads we

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assembled all the experts we had a

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workshop and the problem is we didn't

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have enough data to figure out what was

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happening we didn't have enough cameras

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in there so we ran that went on with as

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many cameras that we could get with high

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def cameras we had 35 millimeter cameras

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we had three or four different

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high-speed cameras it was just the most

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photographs that a parachute inflation

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test any of us had ever seen

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oh you just drilled that it's perfect

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perfect they're both perfect still a

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blur that is awesome especially got them

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that footage is awesome that doesn't

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exist anywhere else in the world any

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parachute

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I kid you not we have no idea we have no

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idea we have no idea if they all look

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like that or if none of them look like

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that because we've got nothing to base

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you know every time I have one of these

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tests even though you've done them again

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and again you know there's always that

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pressure that you have to have to

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perform because the visual data the

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high-speed video was really some of the

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most important data that was being

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collected

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you can't put instrumentation on parish

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so the only the only thing to record

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that the parachute really was the

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high-speed video and the responsibility

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for that was on the photographers yeah