The telegraph
Devon company that made World War II parachutes to land the Mars Perseverance Rover
A Devon company that made parachutes for World War II will help smooth out the Perseverance rover’s landing when it reaches Mars tonight. Tiverton-based Heathcoat Fabrics, founded by a family of inventors who started working with lace and silk in the 19th century, now manufactures state-of-the-art fabrics for space companies and NASA, as well as military and energy customers. Director Peter Hill admitted to being “a little nervous” about the great moment of the parachute, which will happen during the “seven minutes of terror” during which the ship will be on its own after entering the Martian atmosphere, as events happen too fast to be communicated back to earth in time. “It has been extensively tested. One would expect nothing to go wrong, but landing on Mars is very complicated and difficult,” he said. The parachute, made of extremely strong nylon, was baked at 135 ° C to kill any microorganisms, before traveling through space at temperatures well below zero. The company already has a significant space pedigree, having landed a probe on Saturn’s moon Titan in 2005 and the Beagle 2 mission to Mars, which failed for unrelated reasons, in addition to working for private space companies that Hill is not allowed to name. “No other manufacturer of parachute fabrics that is still in existence today, since before World War II. As far as we know, no one has done this for as long as we have. We have a much longer history than anyone else., ” he says. The company joins other British experts on the mission, which if successfully landed will make the Rover spend a decade on Mars, collecting samples before bringing them back to Earth, hoping to find evidence that life before has prospered over there.