A trial that would have sent a NASA "flying saucer" high above the Earth to test a technology aimed at safely landing astronauts on Mars has been postponed, the space agency says.
Adverse weather conditions were the cause of abandoning Wednesday's scheduled test involving the saucer-like vehicle, NASA spokesowoman Shannon Ridinger said.
The next possible launch date would be June 14, she said.
The device, known as the Low Density Supersonic Decelerator, would inflate to a saucer shape to slow a descending spacecraft from supersonic speeds down to subsonic speeds in the thin atmosphere of the Red Planet.
Parachutes have long been utilized to slow previous spacecraft as they entered the thin Martian atmosphere. However, heaver loads or spacecraft carrying astronauts will need something bigger and stronger, NASA scientists say.
"We've been using the same parachutes for several decades now," says project principle investigator Ian Clark of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "If we want to eventually land a human on the surface of Mars, we realized we need to develop new technologies."
NASA's Curiosity rover currently on Mars weighs about a ton, but the LDSD could land something twice as heavy, NASA scientists said, and using multiple LDSDs could provide a soft landing for spacecraft weighing as much as 20 or 30 tons.
In the proposed test here on Earth, a balloon launched from Hawaii will carry the LDSD aloft. Once at the test altitude of around 23 miles, the "saucer" will ignite a rocket engine that will push it to around four times the speed of sound.
From the altitude it will plummet toward the Earth at supersonic speeds to test its configuration, inflating an expandable ring constructed of the material found in bulletproof vests in an attempt to bring its speed down to subsonic levels. It will finally releasing a parachute of its own for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, after which engineers will recover it and study its recorded data to gauge the success of the test.
The postponement is the latest in a series of delays, most caused by winds at the launch site, the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on the island of Kauai.
Testing on Earth will allow engineers to discover any faults before the project goes forward, NASA scientists said.
"We want to test them here -- where it's a lot cheaper -- before we we send them to Mars," said project manager Mark Adler, also of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
