NASA Plans to Prototype Flying Saucer for Mars Travel

Human travel to Mars seems inevitable, so with that in mind NASA is planning to test an early prototype of a flying saucer that will one day be able to transfer heavy loads to the Red Planet.

According to New Scientist, NASA is planning to test its disc-shaped flying saucer spacecraft in Hawaii this June. Known as the Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD), the saucer will lift itself into the stratosphere from the U.S. Navy’s Missile Range Facility on the island of Kauai.

Mars plans to prototype a flying saucer that may one day be capable of human space travel to Mars.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia

For previous landings on the Red Planet, NASA has used parachutes and rockets as well as tethers for the 2012 mission that put the Curiosity rover on Mars. The LDSD would ideally be able to carry very heavy loads and slow down whatever machinery is entering Mars’ thin atmosphere.

“It may seem obvious, but the difference between landing and crashing is stopping,” said Allen Chen, a NASA Jet Propulsion (JPL) scientist who oversaw Curiosity’s landing, told New Scientist. “We really only have two options for sopping at Mars: rockets and aerodynamic drag.”

The saucer will fly up to 55 kilometers above the Pacific Ocean, which equates to roughly halfway to space, and then a test vehicle will detach. The inflatable saucer will fire like a parachute and should be able to help test the vehicle landing softly on the water.

NASA plans for three more similar tests like this to simulate the thin atmosphere on Mars, which can cause an object to fall toward the surface of at supersonic speeds. NASA’s ultimate ambition is to eventually send astronauts to explore Mars, but LDSD could also land rovers and other robotic machines closer to their scientific target.

Curiosity found places in the Gale Crater with a destination of Mount Sharp in its sights. However, the mountain was so far from the landing site, that Curiosity is still trying to reach its destination two years later.

“Personally, I think it’s a game-changer. You could take a mass to the surface equal to something like 1 to 10 Curiosities,” Robert Braun, of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, told New Scientist. “Think about it like a bridge for humans to Mars. This is the next step in a sequence of technologies that would need to be developed.”