NASA is reportedly preparing to conduct the first test flight of a spacecraft which it believes could one day help people reach Mars.
The Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) will be launched from the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai.
The spacecraft has been designed to launch and land with people and heavy loads aboard.
"It may seem obvious, but the difference between landing and crashing is stopping," said Allen Chen at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, according to NewScientist.com. "We really only have two options for stopping at Mars: rockets and aerodynamic drag."
Until now, NASA used parachutes and airbags for most of its robotic landings on Mars, starting back in 1976 for the Viking mission. The heavier the load, the harder it is to successfully complete a robotic landing however.
For its Mars Curiosity rover, NASA invented a system called the sky crane, which combined parachutes with landing gear powered by retro-rockets. This allowed NASA to lower Curiosity on the surface of the Red Planet.
Seven major demos have been scheduled over the next 24 months, which could be used in a real mission to Mars by 2018.
Before the end of 2014, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will use a balloon to launch a test vehicle up to an altitude of 120,000 feet above Hawaii, according to ExtremeTech.com. The vehicle will then use a rocket to reach necessary speeds to raise its altitude an additional 180,000 feet.
As the capsule passes 2,600 mph, or Mach 3.5, the LDSD will then be activated, sending out a Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (SIAD).
When SIAD is fully inflated, it will look like a flying saucer. Once it slows down, a parachute will then be used to bring speeds down for hopefully a successful landing.
"Personally, I think it's a game-changer. You could take a mass to the surface equal to something like 1 to 10 Curiosities," says Robert Braun at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, according to NewScientist.com. "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."
The landing technique is seen as a critical step toward sending a human exploration party to Mars.
NASA is working on two variants of the LDSD, including: one with a 20-foot SIAD for smaller robotic landings, and one with a 26-foot SIAD for larger, human payloads, according to ExtremeTech.com.
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