A 35-meter parachute destined for Mars was just baked in an oven in the Netherlands to make it at least 10,000 times cleaner than your smartphone. The European Space Agency’s ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission will rely on this giant nylon and Kevlar canopy to survive a six-minute dive through the thin Martian atmosphere. If any Earth microbes hitch a ride, they could ruin the search for alien life.
A surgical gown-up before the bake
The parachute, weighing 74 kilograms, spent time inside a specialized dry-heat sterilizer oven at ESA’s Life Support and Physical Sciences Laboratory in ESTEC, the agency’s technical center in the Netherlands. Before the baking began, the parachute was carefully wrapped inside a donut-shaped bag. The cleanroom where it was prepared is so strict that every person entering must gown up more rigorously than a surgeon and pass through an air shower to remove contaminants. All air inside the room continuously passes through a two-stage filter.
Why Mars needs a spotless parachute
The ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover will launch in 2028 and spend over 25 months traveling to the Red Planet. Its mission is to search for signs of life beneath the Martian surface. But any hardy terrestrial microbes that survive the ride through space could interfere with the investigation by causing forward contamination and triggering a false positive. Protecting the Martian environment from ourselves, in accordance with international planetary protection measures, is as important as protecting the mission itself.
The largest parachute ever to fly beyond Earth
This parachute will be the largest ever deployed on Mars or anywhere else in the Solar System besides Earth. It will slow the rover for a safe landing after a high-speed entry into the thin atmosphere. The sterilization process ensures that no microbes piggyback their way to Mars, preserving the scientific integrity of the search for past or present life on our closest planetary neighbor.
