Tiverton agency making extra parachute cloth for Mars

An organization in Devon is growing a brand new cloth for use on a parachute to land on Mars.

Heathcoat Materials in Tiverton are working with NASA once more, after successfully creating the parachute material that took a rover to the pink planet in 2021.

The newest cloth must be twice as sturdy as that one, because of the dimension of auto it’s delivering.

On Tuesday they have been visited by representatives of NASA.

Katie Siegel, Programs Engineer at NASA mentioned: “Our plan is to construct a fair larger lander that may go to Mars and hopefully be capable of bundle up samples and convey them again, and to land that we want a much bigger parachute that may tackle far more load.”

LISTEN: Heathcote Fabrics talk to BBC Radio Devon

Peter Hill, director of Woven Materials, defined the rationale the agency are the “market leaders on this discipline”.

“We have now been making parachute materials for the reason that Thirties, about 90 years, and on high of that we have now acquired modern new equipment, we are able to make wider cloth than anybody else which is important for the larger parachutes,” he mentioned.

“We have now high-tech merchandise which are a lot stronger than another materials available on the market, They’ve increased warmth resistance which is important as a result of the materials have to be handled at that top temperature earlier than they go into house.

“Different materials – made within the US for instance – have failed these checks. We have now acquired a workforce of textile engineers who work on these merchandise and might design bespoke merchandise that no one else can do.”

The materials are designed and made of their Tiverton manufacturing facility.

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