After I read the OP and made my response, I drifted off into "internet surf land' and came across a couple articles about the difficulties involved in landing on Mars. Looks like I remembered most of it pretty well (pretty good since it's been a while since I looked at any of that stuff). And, I also came across a really interesting video about the JPL's recent research designing parachutes which function properly when deployed above supersonic speeds. Pretty interesting stuff (I can post a link if anyone desires). Probably dry if you're not into that kind of stuff like I am (pretty much anything to do with aerodynamics and/or aviation/space travel I'm into...to the point of getting whacked over the head by my bride for not paying attention to whatever it is she's droning on about, erm, 'talking' about (which is clearly of utmost and critical importance for the continued survival of humanity! Ahem.)! LOL!
Turns out if you fire off a chute above Mach 2 it will pretty much self destruct instantly once it starts to collect air. Small drogue chutes are fine, but not parachutes in the 70+ feet in diameter range. JPL managed to find solutions for most of these issues in 2019, and now they have parachutes which can operate properly at 2x these velocities with 2x+ the design strength or any payload thought to be needed on Mars for the foreseeable future. A digression here, I suppose, but I thought it a little interesting factoid because it turns out that somewhere above Mach 1.5 is the sweet spot for where you want to deploy a large main chute on the descent to Mars.
That was really it, just thought I'd share.
Turns out if you fire off a chute above Mach 2 it will pretty much self destruct instantly once it starts to collect air. Small drogue chutes are fine, but not parachutes in the 70+ feet in diameter range. JPL managed to find solutions for most of these issues in 2019, and now they have parachutes which can operate properly at 2x these velocities with 2x+ the design strength or any payload thought to be needed on Mars for the foreseeable future. A digression here, I suppose, but I thought it a little interesting factoid because it turns out that somewhere above Mach 1.5 is the sweet spot for where you want to deploy a large main chute on the descent to Mars.
That was really it, just thought I'd share.