re: I believe it only had three parachutes
Hi, Gary:
In the JPL commentary from this morning, a gentleman from ESA (forgive me, I am terrible with names) narrated a short film simulating the landing of Huygens and yes, there were three main chutes and a final one that brought the probe to it's final resting place.
I understand what you're saying, in the case of the 'heavy' MERs the parachute deployed with a mortar worked well, but my reasoning also tells me that in the case of a fast spinning probe, the sequenced jettison of chutes would work best. MHO The Beagle 2 had two chutes, correct? Then again, they think that the pyrotecnics that were to deploy the chutes didn't work...