Mars supersonic parachute

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is currently developing future Mars program that may include land based rover and low orbit satellite.  For the land based rover, it needs to be delivered safely to the Mars surface via a module that enter the atmosphere at supersonic speed. To reduce the rate of descent a parachute that can withstand a supersonic velocity is needed. The research that we performed is to investigate various parachute shape using a solid and fabric model using a supersonic wind tunnel. 

AIM
To investigate the performance (drag coefficient) of various supersonic parachute model using JAXA's 1x1 m supersonic wind tunnel.

METHOD
The experiments are performed in JAXA's 1x1 m supersonic wind tunnel. Two types of scaled model are investigated, the first is  solid model (made of aluminium) with various dimensions and the second one is a fabric model. the fabric model is made from the same material as the actual supersonic parachute. Here we measured the coefficient of drag at various Mach speed.

RESULTS
The results from the model measurements (both solid and fabric) are analysed and form the base of the actual parachute size experiment . 

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Experiment figures