Ever since Curiosity managed to make it through the 7 minutes of terror and land on Mars, the focus has all been on the Curiosityrover and what it discovers. It’s easy to forget that the landing also saw a heat shield and parachute deposited on the surface of the planet.
Of course, NASA has been keeping an eye on things, including regularly capturing images of the discarded parachute that is still attached to the backshell. You may think the parachute is of no interest, but surprisingly it has helped answer a few questions.
NASA used the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to capture 7 images of the parachute between August 2012 and January 2013. During that time the parachute can been seen to visibly change shape while the area around the backshell got progressively lighter.
The 65-foot-wide parachute is thought to be moving in the wind. It has actually gotten smaller over time suggesting the wind has folded it up. It has also remained bright in the images, also pointing to the wind moving it and allowing any dust that has gathered on the material to fall off. At the same time, the area around the backshell has become lighter because dust is building up on the landscape and covering up the damage the impact caused.
The fact the parachute has remained bright and is clearly moving helps explain why the parachute from the Viking 1 that landed on Mars in 1976 has also remained bright enough to see. And it just goes to show, keeping an eye on even the smallest of details and objects that no longer seem relevant to a mission can be informative.
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