what makes a parachute supersonic and why was it used by Perseverance rover?
In: Physics
It’s a parachute that is optimized to deal with supersonic flow.
It was used on the rover because Mars has almost no atmosphere. The air is so thin there that you can’t decelerate to below the speed of sound using a heat shield. This means opening the chute at high speed in a low pressure gas. A very cleaver bit of engineering.
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