NASA is preparing to test its disc-shaped vehicle designed to land on Mars.
The launch will take place on the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility in the Hawaiian island of Kauai on Tuesday, and is designed for landing heavy loads of material on the Red Planet, according to ABC News.
The test will take place high in the Earth's atmosphere in order to simulate Mars' thin air. The testing date will also depend on the weather.
The action will be caught by the vehicle's cameras as it reaches four times the speed of sound and plummets back to Earth. The footage will be live for people to witness on the Internet, Phys.org reported.
Engineers warned that the first test may not be a successful one.
"As long as I get data, I'll be very happy," said Mark Adler, project manager from the NASA Jet Propulsion Observatory.
Howard McCurdy, space policy professor at American University, said in an email that landing huge payloads on the Red Planet has always been "one of the big technology challenges for a human Mars mission."
The space agency needs larger technology to land heavier spacecraft and eventually humans, ABC News reported. The supersonic parachute for Tuesday's mission is 100 feet in diameter, which is twice as big as the parachute that carried the 1-ton Curiosity rover in 2012. The parachute is big enough to fit in the wind tunnels used by NASA for testing parachutes.
The agency is looking to test the parachute on Earth, since it's impractical to use Mars for testing technology that hasn't been proven to work. The flying balloon will lift the vehicle off the facility to 23 miles over the Pacific Ocean, where it will drop the vessel. It will then reach Mach 4, climbing to 34 miles, an altitude that has an environment similar Mars' atmosphere.
Robert Braun, space technology professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, said the test will be a "high-risk, high-reward effort." He also said in an email that the latest test program "is advancing capabilities and creating the engineering knowledge needed for the next generation of Mars landers," Phys.org reported.
Before deciding if it should use the parachute for a mission to Mars in the future, NASA looks to conduct four test flights next year.
