{"id":11040,"date":"2021-02-19T09:58:29","date_gmt":"2021-02-19T09:58:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.heathcoat.co.uk\/?p=11040"},"modified":"2021-03-26T15:17:22","modified_gmt":"2021-03-26T15:17:22","slug":"perseverance-landing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heathcoat.co.uk\/fr\/perseverance-landing\/","title":{"rendered":"Delivering a soft landing on Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"

20:55 on Thursday 18 February marked another fantastic achievement in the story of Heathcoat Fabrics\u2019 journey into space. That was the time the Perseverance rover \u2013 Mars2020 mission \u2013 landed on the red planet. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Perseverance launched on July 30, 2020 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, propelled on the start of its seven-month, 480-million-kilometre journey by an Atlas V rocket.<\/p>\n

Because of the distance between Earth and Mars, there is an 11-minute delay in any communications. As a result, Perseverance hit the planet’s atmosphere without any outside guidance, relying only on autonomous systems. Because the planet’s atmosphere is incredibly thin, it does not offer much resistance, barely slowing down the rover travelling within its protective shell.<\/p>\n

Just four minutes after entering the Martian atmosphere, and still travelling at 20,000km\/h per hour (that\u2019s 16x the speed of sound), the rover deployed a world-record-breaking parachute to slow down. NASA said: “<\/strong>In the thin Martian atmosphere, the parachute is only able to slow the vehicle to about 320km\/h.\u201d<\/strong> The impact shock of \u201cslamming on the brakes\u201d at hypersonic speeds is incredible, with the single parachute achieving a 98.4% reduction in speed. This is the moment that not only NASA control were holding their breath, but also the team of fabric engineers and production staff at Heathcoat\u2019s manufacturing site in Tiverton, who was responsible for developing and producing the fabric for the parachute used for the Mars 2020 mission.<\/p>\n