"You probably would not damage your bumper if you hit a car at this speed, " said landing-system engineer Devin Kipp at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who helped design the parachute.
"I personally like to think of it as an intellect upgrade, since the 'brain' remains the same, " said Jim Donaldson, the mission's avionics chief engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
"The message did not arrive at the device meant to deploy the chute, " said Gentry Lee, chief engineer of planetary systems at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.