As humans get more ambitious with their plans for exploring Mars, we’re going to need to land bigger spacecraft on its surface. Up until now, NASA’s robotic missions have used parachutes, inflatable bubbles, and sky cranes, as well as descent rockets. But to land the kind of heavy spaceships that can carry human astronauts to Mars, engineers will need new methods to touch down.

At the moment, most spacecraft rely on parachutes to slow down from a whopping Mach 30 or so as they enter the M