A canopy of confidence: Orion’s parachutes

They were perhaps some of the most visible images of the end of each Apollo mission: Giant orange and white parachutes unfurled high above the spacecraft, gently descending toward the ocean. As NASA continues to build the Orion spacecraft and head toward its first unmanned test flight in 2014, it will once again descend under parachutes to a water landing. But even though the orange and white chutes remain, their design and testing is quite different than in the past.

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