This Plane May One Day Fly To Mars

The newest addition to the NASA family, the Prandtl-M prototype, has just completed its first test flight. It is going to be a small glider aircraft that will be flown remotely. NASA engineers designed this machine with the help of two groups of students. It flew for the first time on 11 August 2016 at the Armstrong Flight Research Centre located in California. Rumor is that it will be able to fly in the atmosphere of Mars one day and even bring back samples. More people are getting intrigued by the possibility of maybe going to Mars one day and the actual possibility is getting closer every day. The trip to the red planet is closer than ever now that a prototype built for this purpose has actually flown. It has a wingspan of only 25 feet, a weight of around 28 pounds and airspeed of about 18 knots. Its structure is made of carbon fiber and it has a fiber glass skin.

The students are full of confidence that the Prandtl-M and all of its systems that they themselves helped to develop and validate will soon fly in the skies of the red planet. The head of SpaceX and entrepreneur, Elon Musk, said that he is planning unmanned crafts to land on Mars as soon as 2018 and manned operations by 2030. NASA is hoping on their astronauts being on Mars in the mid-2030s.

Jan Woerner, the Director-General of the European Space agency says that the technology needed for a manned mission is at least 15 years away. In order to fly people to Mars they would need rockets and fuel that will be strong enough to lift the plane off again so they could return. Another consideration is protection from radiation for those going and also protection against the unknown mental and physical effects they may suffer. Once people are permanently settled on the moon, 3D printers may be able to print the needed items to make a round trip more of a possibility.