The science of Gaganyaan parachutes | Explained

Any spacecraft entering the earth’s atmosphere will rely primarily on atmospheric drag to reduce a significant portion of its velocity as it aerobrakes.

Towards the terminal phase, to gently touchdown on land or in sea, additional decelerating systems like parachutes have to be activated to further reduce its velocity to acceptable limits.

The parachute used for crewed space vehicles demands extraordinary engineering with multi-staging, redundancy, high-performance materials and high-pressure packing for reducing the storage space.

Generally, the parachute system contains three types of chutes: pilot, drogue, and main. The pilot chute is a mini-parachute deployed to pull out larger diameter drogue or main chutes. The drogue chute is deployed early in the descent to stabilise the module and first reduce the velocity. The main chute has a wider canopy and is used in the final phase to reduce the velocity enough to achieve gentle soft-landing conditions.