Stratospheric Deployment Parafoil, Phase I

The Stratospheric Deployment Parafoil is a proposed technology that will be designed and tested to provide a greatly superior parachute precision delivery system under thin atmosphere conditions, including Mars entry. Current systems incorporate a parachute which lacks the controllability necessary for precision landing. The non-controllable parachutes act only as a delivery system but afford no way to direct the parachute descent. The new technology will eliminate the uncontrollable system and, rather than using a round parachute variant, will have a high L/D parafoil capable of precision control and landing. This controllable parafoil will have a multistage deployment sequence which will accomplish high speed, even supersonic parachute deployment with the parachute in a reefed condition. The first stage of the deployment will approximate a conical ribbon parachute which will slow the system to subsonic speeds. Once the system has slowed sufficiently, subsequent stages of the deployment will transition the non-controllable parachute to a fully controllable, precision-landing parafoil. More »