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‘Press Release’ Category

ASNA (Airborne Systems North America) graduated the first 8 Military Free Fall Jumpers on the new USMC PS-2 Parachute designed and manufactured by Airborne Systems. The graduating of these jumpers along with the assessment of the United States Special Operations Command serves as the Validation and Certification for ASNA to begin the full 44 student course starting in November.

Four months ago, ASNA was awarded a 5-year IDIQ to train approximately 400 Marines each year on Basic Military Free Fall Techniques. To conduct this high-risk training ASNA has teamed with CRC (Crisis Response Company, LLC) and Airborne Support Group, LLC.  CRC is responsible for providing the highly skilled instructor and rigging staff, while Airborne Support Group provides the aircraft.

The 4 week course takes a Marine who has never conducted Military Free Fall training though an intense train up of ground classes, emergency procedures, wind tunnel training, actions in the aircraft, body flight, and canopy control. After approximately 30 jumps the students make their final high altitude jump at night using night vision goggles, oxygen system and full combat equipment signaling the proficiency gained during their training.

Over the last century, Airborne Systems has strived to innovate and continue to evolve the aerial delivery landscape.  Over the last 100 years ANSA has designed, tested, and manufacture parachutes for the armed forces for the United States and over 50 of our allied countries. Now we can add a dedicated Military Training Facility to our portfolio.

We are proud to start this new chapter in training and continue to be the number one parachute company in the world. Not only is this a major milestone for Airborne Systems, and its teammates but also for the USMC as they continue fielding the new PS-2 Parachute.  Airborne!

Unless you’ve been living on a different planet, you may have already heard that NASA has just landed the heaviest and most sophisticated rover, Percy (OK, officially Perseverance), on the Red planet.  What you may not have heard is that a hundred year old company in Southern California, just 50 miles south of NASA JPL, was responsible for designing and manufacturing the state-of-the-art parachute that safely decelerated Percy from supersonic speeds ready for the daring SkyCrane maneuver.

Let’s talk about the fun stuff, parachute details, obviously. The Mars 2020 parachute is 70.5 feet (21.5 meters) in diameter, deploys about 240 seconds after atmospheric entry, at an altitude of about 7 miles (11 kilometers) and a velocity of about 940 mph (1,512 kph), which means the parachute was inflating at about Mach 1.75. To get the full stats on entry, descent, and landing (EDL), check out this article.

With Percy weighing in at over 2,200 lbs, about the weight of a car, this was the heaviest Mars landing to date, which required the strongest parachute ever flown on Mars or any other planet, except Earth!  What makes this landing even more special for the parachute world is that it’s the first time anybody has actually seen a parachute perform in the Mars atmosphere.  In the past, parachute performance on Mars has been deduced or inferred based on data, but this time we have high speed video, video that will be poured over frame by frame to aid future missions to Mars and other planetary bodies.

The parachute, weighing approximately 180 pounds, was mortar deployed from the back of the aeroshell and inflated in less than a second.  Meaning it took less than a second to transform the parachute from a 18 by 26 inch cylinder of nylon, Kevlar, and Technora compressed to the density of wood, into a fully inflated 70.5 ft nominal diameter parachute. The tens of thousands of pounds of force that the parachute generated during this supersonic inflation stressed both the parachute and the vehicle.

Here at Airborne Systems we couldn’t be more proud to have played a part in this amazing feat for humankind.  We like to think of Mars 2020 as being the ultimate parachute test vehicle, but in truth the real mission is only just beginning……..

To learn more about what Percy is up to on Mars, check out ‘7 things to know about the Mars Perseverance Mission’ as well as the Perseverance mission page. And if you noticed the unique pattern on the parachute in these images, you’ll like this as well.

We talked about our Journey to Mars, then we talked about the official launch to Mars, but now what? What comes next?

Since we have a bit of time before we land on Mars on February 18, 2021 20:00 UTC, here is some key information on the mission itself, parachutes aside.

“Perseverance is now on its way to seek signs of ancient life and collect rock and soil samples for possible return to Earth. Along with the rover is the Ingenuity helicopter, a technology demonstration that will be the first powered flight on Mars. The rover will arrive on the Red Planet on Feb. 18, 2021.

The mission addresses high-priority science goals for Mars exploration, including key astrobiology questions concerning the potential for life on Mars. It not only seeks signs of habitable conditions on Mars in the ancient past, but also will search for signs of past microbial life.” (From Mars.Nasa.gov)

You can keep up with the mission status continuously on NASA’s page here.

The Airborne Systems team is so proud of the history being made here, and ecstatic to play a role in such a momentous feat.

Safe travels, Perseverance!