‘Robotic boomerang wing’, that could fly over Mars…is under Testing by NASA

As scientists continue to battle with a afflict problem
of how to land humans to Mars and how to bring them safely home, the robotic
research of the Red Planet has already earned many amazing discoveries. But,
our missions to the asteroid’s surface have
studied only a teeny fraction of the land area, and rovers are not expected to
get much faster in the future.

NASA has just finished preliminary testing on a strange wing design that could a single day allow a Mars study to soar
through it’s thin atmosphere and cover great spaces.

There are two projects performing in tandem and both
based on equally high-lift boomerang-carved wing design. There’s the Prandtl-d (Preliminary
Research Aerodynamic Design to Lower- Drag) and the forward-looking Prandol-m (Preliminary
Research Aerodynamic Design to Land on Mars). The Prandtl-d design has been
tested by NASA scientists for some time now, but it has only newly been
subjected to a full battery of wind tunnel tests. This is crucial to understand how the wing will implement in different
conditions, including those on Mars, if
the design is carried over to a space mission.

A small model of the plane will be liberated at an altitude of 100,000
feet. The atmosphere up that high is a close likeness of Mars, so it is
important to know whether Prandtl-m could generate sufficient lift to stay
aloft or not, in such conditions?. If the test goes good, that could be huge
for future “Mars missions”.