The great parachute bake-out

Carefully wrapped inside this donut-shaped bag is a 35-m diameter parachute about to be baked inside a specialised dry heater steriliser oven.This 74 kg parachute, made mostly of nylon and Kevlar fabrics, will endure a six-minute dive into the thin martian atmosphere and slow down the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover for a safe landing on Mars. This feat will make it the largest parachute ever to fly on the Red Planet or anywhere else in the Solar System besides Earth.The ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission will launch in 2028 and spend over 25 months travelling to the Red Planet where it will search for signs of life under the martian surface.The potential existence of past and perhaps even present-day life on our closest planetary neighbour requires rigorous sterilisation, to make…

Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Esa.