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For future Mars missions, the inflatable heat shield would be combined with other systems like parachutes and retrorockets to guide the lander en route to a soft landing.

Another technology is retrorockets, used to take over from parachutes in the final stages of descent.

If she had fired her retrorockets when originally instructed to, she would have been pushed farther out into space without a way to return.

Seconds later — 1.3 miles up — eight retrorockets on the descent stage fire, slowing the craft and flying it toward its target.

But the air is too thin to slow a lander with only a parachute, so Tianwen-1’s lander must fire retrorockets at the exact right time to stop its descent.