Scientists from NASA are conducting a series of research flights to advance the supersonic parachutes. The plan is to make these parachutes more reliable and safer with advanced sensors. These upgraded parachutes are aimed at delivering scientific instruments and payloads to Mars.
Led by the EPIC (Enhancing Parachutes by Instrumenting the Canopy) team, the flight tests were a first step toward filling gaps in computer models to improve supersonic parachutes.
This work raises the possibility of opening the door to future partnerships, including with the aerospace and auto racing industries.
Air-launched capsule deploys parachute equipped with sensors
The tests were conducted at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.
During a June flight test, a quadrotor aircraft, or drone, air-launched a capsule that deployed a parachute equipped with a sensor. The flexible, strain-measuring sensor attached to the parachute did not interfere with the canopy material, just as the EPIC team had predicted. The sensors also provided data, a bonus for planning upcoming tests, according to details provided by NASA.
“Reviewing the research flights will help inform our next steps. We are speaking with potential partners to come up with a framework to obtain the data that they are interested in pursuing,” said Matt Kearns, project manager for EPIC at NASA Armstrong.
“Our team members are developing methods for temperature testing the flexible sensors, data analysis, and looking into instrumentation for future tests.”
Commercially available flexible strain sensors
The capsule and parachute system were developed by NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. NASA Armstrong interns worked with Langley to build and integrate a similar system for testing at NASA Armstrong. An earlier phase of the work focused on finding commercially available flexible strain sensors and developing a bonding method as part of an STMD Early Career Initiative project, as per the details available on the project.
Supersonic parachutes were earlier used
Supersonic parachutes were earlier used by NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover in 2021, when it entered the thin Martian atmosphere at hypersonic speeds of about 12,100 miles (12,500 kilometers) per hour.
Perseverance’s supersonic parachute, 65-feet in diameter and only three thousandths of an inch thick, fully opened in less than half a second, undergoing aerodynamic forces of over 30 thousand pounds.
The agency has been developing numerical methods to simulate supersonic parachute design and inflation.
The physics of parachute inflation include several complicating factors, including unsteady turbulent wakes; the interaction of these wakes with the shockwave caused by the spacecraft at supersonic speeds (known as a bow shock); supersonic flow through openings in the parachute; and the motion and deformation of the parachute body itself, NASA revealed earlier.
NASA’s latest project completed five test flights on June 4, 2025, at NASA’s Armstong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.
As part of the latest effort, a NASA team used a drone to test a parachute canopy sensor and bonding method.