As we reported earlier here on Immortal News, NASA’s flying saucer known as the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD), which is intended for use in the agency’s mission to Mars, was scheduled for a spin-test on Tuesday and it looks like the test went off without a hitch.
The U.S. space agency published a video of the LDSD’s “spin” test on their official YouTube channel. The video, which was published on March 31, 2015 shows the 7,000-pound rocket-powered test vehicle’s “spin-table” test, which was conducted from the gallery above a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
The recent spin-test comes in preparation for the vehicle’s near-space test flight scheduled for June of this year. The summer test flight will take place in Hawaii, at the Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility on the island of Kauai. The vehicle’s first test flight took place back in June of 2014.
The 15-foot-wide Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator is intended to enable the agency to safely land larger payloads on the martian surface, but it’s also designed to allow for higher elevation landings which subsequently opens up access to more of the red planet’s surface.
Scientists and engineers behind the deceleration device designed the vehicle with the principle in mind which keeps bullets and arrows from tumbling as they fly through the air — the projectile’s spinning motion — which they applied to the vehicle’s design. The LDSD is essentially wound up prior to acceleration, allowing it to fly straighter and meet the agency’s expectations for not only flying to, but landing on the martian surface.
What are your thoughts on NASA’s flying saucer?
