Parachuting

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Parachuting

Four skydivers with deployed parachutes in Bex, Vaud, Switzerland
Highest governing body	Fédération Aéronautique Internationale
Characteristics
Contact	No
Mixed-sex	Yes
Type	Air sports
Presence
Country or region	Worldwide
Olympic	No
World Games	1997 – 2017

Parachuting and skydiving are methods of descending from a high point in an atmosphere to the ground or ocean surface with the aid of gravity, involving the control of speed during the descent using a parachute or multiple parachutes.

For human skydiving, there is often a phase of free fall (the skydiving segment), where the parachute has not yet been deployed and the body gradually accelerates to terminal velocity.

In cargo parachuting, the parachute descent may begin immediately, such as a parachute-airdrop in the lower atmosphere of Earth, or it may be significantly delayed. For example, in a planetary atmosphere, where an object is descending "under parachute" following atmospheric entry from space, may occur only after the hypersonic entry phase and initial deceleration that occurs due to friction with the thin upper atmosphere.