In a statement on Wednesday, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said that test of the parachute system created for the Orion spacecraft was successful. Researchers replicated the failure scenario to check one of two parachutes used to control the speed of capsule at a high altitude, and one main parachute used to slow down the module to landing, NASA added.

According to the US space agency, Orion capsule is going to play a major role in Mars mission. The capsule has the special ability to take humans to the Red Planet in near future. The parachute performance of the Orion is very hard to model with the help of computer, the agency added.

Last year, during a flight test of Orion in space, its parachute system performed as per the agency’s expectations. The system allowed the capsule to descend through the atmosphere of earth and splash in the waters of the Pacific Ocean after going more than 3,500 miles into the space. This time, the NASA researchers programmed the capsule’s parachutes to deploy partially.

Like other tests in the past, the craft’s prototype was allowed to come down from a long distance in the space and fall freely toward the surface of earth. While talking in detail about the successful test, C.J. Johnson, project manager for Orion’s parachute system, said, “We test Orion’s parachutes to the extremes to ensure we have a safe system for bringing crews back to Earth on future flights, even if something goes wrong”.