"The aim of the project is to design, produce and validate a demonstrator of a Steerable Aircraft Parachute System for rescue of small and medium size airplanes, such as Light Sport Aircrafts (LSA), weighting up to 500 kg, as well as for space capsules, and navigated within the frame of the Global Navigation Satellite System GNSS (e.g. GPS/EGNOS/Galileo).Once the emergency system is activated by the pilot, the rescue system will deploy a rectangular parachute which will be automatically steered to a safe landing zone by means of an Autonomous Guiding Unit (AGU). The main purpose of the rescue parachute system is therefore to slow the aircraft to a reasonable descent speed leading to a safe and survivable landing and touchdown.The consortium includes: an SME company from Spain (CIMSA, Project Coordinator) specialized in the development, industrialization and marketing of parachute systems; an SME from the Netherlands Satellite Services BV - SSBV), specialized in avionics and communication services; an SME from Switzerland (Airlight) specialized in the development and manufacturing of fabrics for lightweight structures; an SME from Spain (Zero2Infinity) dedicated to touristic and scientific high-altitude flights; an SME from Spain (QUANTECH) focused on the development and commercialization of simulation software. Finally, an industrial company from Germany (Flight Design), which specializes in the design and production of small and medium size aircrafts has been also included in the consortium as end-user. Flight Design will become an SME in 2013 corresponding to period 2 of the project.SME partners expect to increase their annual turnover (between 10-12%) by using the PARAPLANE system and other outcomes of the project.The partnership includes three RTD performers from Spain, Germany and Netherlands with unique experience in the development of computational techniques for aeroelastic analysis of parachutes (CIMNE), control and guidance systems (NLR) and real-time data acquisition systems (DLR)."