Watch NASA spin-test its Mars-bound 'flying saucer' this afternoon
As NASA prepares to send more spacecraft, and eventually humans, to Mars, its scientists are having to rethink the parachute. Mars is what NASA calls a tricky “in-between” environment: unlike the Moon, its atmosphere is too thick to land with rockets alone, but it’s too thin for even a huge parachute to gain much traction. Its missions so far have used a combination of the two, along with other means of slowing a lander. But the larger and more ambitious the craft, the more difficult this becomes.
To address this problem, NASA is trying to develop alternatives with the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) program, and it’s looking at what is basically a high-tech combination of a balloon and a flying saucer. The saucer, which will…
Source:: The Verge
