shape and collapse, while excessive inlet flow likely results in overpressure and raising the risk of bursting. Accordingly, the ballute has to be precisely designed to conform with the environmental conditions it is to be exposed to; similarly, the deployment ought to be with similar care, such as in respect to timing. Improper deployment is likely to cause failure, as excessive deceleration forces risk snapping fixing points and tearing fabric; tangling is another potential risk. Applications The ballute was originally developed in response to the instability of early supersonic parachutes, proving to be an attractive alternative. The ballute has been used on freefall bombs dropped from an aircraft, helping to both retard and stabilise the descent. The ballute has been extensively used through the aerospace industry. One of its earliest uses in the sector was as an element of the escape equipment aboard NASA's Gemini spacecraft; it was also being used to slow down the descent of the Arcas, an early American rocketsondes, by the mid-1960s. During the 1960s, the agency performed detailed research into the ballute as an aerodynamic decelerator system on other planets, such as Mars. Fiction: In the 1984 film 2010: The Year We Make Contact, a ballute is used on the Leonov spacecraft to shield it from the effects of heating during aerobraking, allowing the Leonov to slow itself without expending fuel and establish an orbit around Jupiter's moon Io. In 2000, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory was researching the ballute, emphasising its potential for use in both aerocapture and aerobraking operations. Around that same period, the European Space Agency was also evaluating the use of inflatable shielding as a means of facilitating the controlled reentry of spacecraft. Various proposed interplanetary atmospheric probes have incorporated ballutes; for envisioned missions to Venus, they shall act not only to control atmospheric entry but to provide buoyant support for the sensor payload as well. Landers on Mars may also use ballutes during direct atmospheric entry, while cocoon-style ballutes may also be adopted for orbital transfer vehicles in orbit around Earth. Particularly large ballutes may be used for planetary aerocapture purposes on various planetary bodies around the Solar System. Furthermore, extended designs using inflatable tension cone ballute technology have been proposed for deorbiting NanoSats and recovering low-mass (< ) satellites from low Earth orbit. In early 2012, Armadillo Aerospace used a ballute during the testing of its STIG-A rocket. During February