The European Space Agency announced on 21 July that it had retested a pair of parachutes designed to enable its Rosalind Franklin rover to land safely on the surface of Mars. The ExoMars mission is currently scheduled for launch in 2028.

Initially expected to launch in 2022, the ExoMars mission, a joint initiative between ESA and Roscosmos, was abandoned in its existing form in March 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompted ESA to cut all ties with the country. In November 2022, ESA Member States voted to continue the ExoMars mission under full agency funding. In April 2024, ESA awarded Thales Alenia Space a €522 million contract to carry out this mandate.

One of the most important elements of the ExoMars mission is the system designed to slow the descent module from 21,000 km/h to a soft landing on the surface of Mars. This system consists of a thermal shield, two main parachutes, each deployed by its own pilot chute, and a retro-rocket that will fire 20 seconds before touchdown.

The first-stage parachute measures 15 metres in diameter, while the second spans 35 metres, making it the largest parachute ever flown outside Earth’s atmosphere. The current iterations were first tested in 2021, following a series of failures involving earlier versions in 2019 and 2020. However, the mid-2021 test was not without incident, as the second parachute sustained minor damage despite successfully slowing the mock-up Descent Module.

Shortly after the 2021 test, the mission’s development was put on hold after Russia invaded Ukraine, and the parachutes were put into long-term storage.

On 7 July 2025, the two parachutes were attached to a dummy descent module, which was carried to an altitude of 29 kilometres by a stratospheric helium balloon launched from the Esrange Space Center in Kiruna. The altitude was a critical element of the test, allowing the team to mimic the conditions the parachutes will face in the thin Martian atmosphere, which has roughly 1% of the density of Earth’s atmosphere at sea level.

After being released, the dummy Descent Module underwent 20 seconds of freefall, allowing it to nearly reach the speed of sound before deploying the first parachute.

“The combination of velocity and low atmospheric density in this test is exactly the same as what the parachutes will experience on Mars,” said Luca Ferracina, ESA’s ExoMars Entry Descent and Landing Module system engineer.

According to Ferracina, the parachutes performed as designed, validating an important element of the mission’s Descent Module.