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High above the Eastern Shore of Virginia a rocket is hurtling through the atmosphere at nearly twice the speed of sound

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Attached is a three thousand pound payload that is designed to test a parachute for Mars

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Onboard a computer is calculating the altitude and speed to determine the precise time that it will signal to deploy the parachute

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These aren't the first tests of parachutes from ours

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50 years ago NASA began lofting parachutes to altitudes and speeds meant to simulate the conditions of Mars entry

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those early tests demonstrated the challenges of inflating lightweight materials in a 1500 mile an hour wind and

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Having them survive. Well enough to help enable a safe landing on the Red Planet

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Today as our missions become ever more daring

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We need new parachutes capable of surviving those strenuous environments and we need ways of testing them at loads higher than ever before

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To make those tests a reality

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Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory worked with NASA's Wallops Flight Facility to develop a new test technique the advanced supersonic

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parachute inflation research experiments or

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aspire project uses a two-stage black Brant 9 sounding rocket to carry its payload to the conditions needed to stress the parachute the

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Rocket is launched out over the Atlantic Ocean and ascends to altitudes where the atmosphere of Earth mimics the atmosphere near the surface of Mars

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The third and final aspired test launched on September 7th

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The parachute was deployed at nearly twice the speed of sound in

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Less than half a second 200 pounds of nylon Kevlar and tech Nora go from a small

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Drum sized bag with the density of wood to an inflated parachute with the volume of a large house generating nearly

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70,000 pounds of drag

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Here in slow motion images you can see the rapid emergence of the parachute as it begins generating the drag crucial for deceleration at Mars

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These images give us amazing insights into the physics and early behaviors of a supersonic parachute

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Inflation the apparent ease of the unfurling and unfolding in the parachute belies the severity of the extreme environment in which this occurs

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Awaiting below were a recovery team who had to retrieve both the parachute and the payload and return them to shore

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The parachute was then meticulously rinsed and hung to dry before inspection

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Miles and miles of thread and over 3 million stitches are used to hold the parachute together and we will examine each stitch

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after three successful tests of aspire