A shipment of equipment that was to be used to assemble a prototype for living quarters on Mars was destroyed Saturday when a parachute failed during an airdrop above Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic. Parts of the Mars Society’s Mars Arctic Research Station were destroyed, and two crucial pieces of construction equipment badly damaged when cargo dropped from a U.S. military transport plane smashed into the ground “without assistance” from a parachute, said Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society.