[squilliam]

It works great for lighter unmanned missions, but becomes less useful as you increase in mass. NASA has had to come up with some interesting solutions in order to land their rovers. Mars Pathfinder used a giant inflatable airbag to scrub the remaining speed it had when hit the martian surface(Lithobraking.) MSL Curiosity, after it jettisoned it's heat shield and parachutes, used a rocket-powered 'sky-crane' in order to slow down the last 200 MPH for a soft touchdown.

This is one of the reason SpaceX is focusing on rocket-powered landings of boosters and capsules vs. parachutes. This is a vital technology required to be able to put large amounts of mass on the surface of Mars

[mikeash]

Landing under a parachute is extremely problematic, but they can still be useful for braking before landing, and there's plenty of atmosphere to brake into orbit from an interplanetary trajectory.

Doing that last bit from a 200km/s arrival speed is going to be challenging to put it mildly, but because of the massive deceleration required and the massive heating.