The United States space agency addresses this challenge of how to bring huge cargos on Mars through the development of large aeroshells that can provide good aerodynamic drag to decelerate and deliver larger payloads.

According to Tehelka, with plans to land cargo on Mars, American Space Agency, NASA, is looking forward to get new bright ideas from college and university students. The agency will be using inflatable spacecraft heat shields or the hypersonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerator (HIAD) technology.

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Steve Gaddis, Game Changing Development Programme manager at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, said that the agency is currently developing and flight testing the HIADs, which is a new class of relatively lightweight deployable aeroshells that could safely deliver more than about 20,000 kilograms of a certain object to the surface of the Red Planet.

The agency's popular Mars Curiosity rover is yet the heaviest payload that has ever landed on Mars. It only weighs about almost a thousand kilograms compared to a spacecraft with its crew landing on Mars with the weight of about almost 14,000 to around 28,000 kilograms. Therefore, it is quite a big challenge for NASA on how to increase the weight but will still be able to land safely with a vehicle that carries a substantially heavier load through the thin Martian atmosphere.

The agency then faces this challenge, according to Latest News, by asking the interested teams of three to five undergraduate and/or graduate students to submit their ideas that describe their concepts by November 15. It is apparent that HIAD technology is a leading idea because aeroshells can also generate lift that would allow NASA to potentially do other different kinds of missions.

Selected teams will continue in the competition by submitting in early 2016 their full technical papers with regard to their chosen concept. Only up to four teams will then present their concepts to NASA's panel of judges at the BIG Idea Forum in April 2016 at Langley. Each finalist team will receive U.S. $6,000 stipend to assist with their full participation in the forum.

TagsNASA, Mars Curiosity rover, red planet, Tehelka, HIAD