Mars may soon be explored utilizing an aircraft, NASA officials announced. The vehicle could be folded up, and packed into a tiny CubeSat for travel to the Red Planet. Mission engineers believe such a flight could take place by the year 2022.

Aeroshells used to absorb the heat of a trip through the Martian atmosphere currently need to shed ballast at two different points during descent, in order to maintain balance and reduce weight. However, launching material from Earth, and sending it all the way to Mars just to throw it away constitutes a large expense for minimal benefit. Therefore, NASA is soliciting ideas about what could be used for ballast that would also serve a secondary purpose. The drive is known as NASA's Mass Balance Challenge.

The Preliminary Research Aerodynamic Design to Land on Mars (Prandtl-m) could supply mass for entry through the atmosphere, and deliver good science as well. The airplane, specially designed for traveling through the tenuous atmosphere of Mars, could assist mission managers planning to send human beings to the Red Planet.

"It would be able to deploy and fly in the Martian atmosphere and glide down and land. The Prandtl-m could overfly some of the proposed landing sites for a future astronaut mission and send back to Earth very detailed high-resolution photographic map images that could tell scientists about the suitability of those landing sites," Al Bowers, Prandtl-m program manager, said.

CubeSats are tiny shells, designed as cubes, usually four inches on each side, which can be stacked together. Inside the boxes are functioning satellites. Three of these pieced together are known as a 3U CubeSat. The Prandtl-m is designed to fly to the Red Planet within one of these 3U units, then unfold after being released from the aeroshell of a Mars lander.

After spreading its wings, the Prandtl-m would cruise roughly 20 miles over 10 minutes, starting at an altitude of around 2,000 feet.

Currently, a larger, heavier version of the vehicle, known as the Prandtl-d, is nearly ready for testing here on Earth. The craft will be lifted to an altitude of nearly 100,000 feet, before being released. During that first test, the vehicle would not be folded, and engineers are mainly concerned with achieving level flight. A second test flight would have the vehicle achieve the same goal starting from within a CubeSat. The third and final test has a goal of launching the Prandtl-d aboard a rocket, after which it could cruise for five hours.

The Prandtl-m would replace its mass in ballast that would have otherwise been sent to Mars with a lander scheduled for 2022, so the weight of the vehicle would not add to the cost of the mission.