Huntington Beach-based Karman Space & Defense (NYSE: KRMN) said today it has been selected by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to design and develop the parachute deployment system for NASA’s SkyFall mission to Mars. Financial details were not released.
The system is a mission-critical element of SkyFall’s entry and descent sequence. Launch is scheduled for 2028.
As the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere, Karman’s system will deploy a parachute to slow the vehicle before the mission releases three helicopters to study Martian weather patterns and search for subsurface ice deposits.
For further information on Karman, see the Nov. 2 edition of the Business Journal.