Nasa is making the final preparations for a test flight for its supersonic saucer-shaped vehicle.

The Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) looks like the descendant of a 1950s UFO report, but the vehicle is designed to produce a lot of drag, with the technology developed in the hope of using it to safely land larger payloads on the surface of Mars.

The test, which is designed to simulate the “entry, descent and landing speeds a spacecraft would be exposed to when flying through the Martian atmosphere”, is scheduled for between 3 – 13 June at the US Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) Kauai, Hawaii.

During the test, the LDSD will be carried to an altitude of 120,000 feet (36,576m) by a giant balloon. When the balloon is released, rockets will carry the vehicle up to 180,000 feet (54,864m) and accelerate it to supersonic speeds. Once it is travelling at 3.5 times the speed of sound, “the saucer’s decelerator will inflate, slowing the vehicle down, and then a parachute will deploy to carry it to the ocean’s surface”, according to Nasa.

The decelerators are very large, durable tubes that can be rapidly inflated to increase the drag on the vehicle and reduce its velocity. Nasa is testing these supersonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerators in 6-meter-diameter and 8-meter-diameter configurations, along with a huge parachute.

Nasa has already performed ground tests with the LDSD, but size of the parachute has meant that the landing could not be tested in one of Nasa’s wind tunnels, and needed to be tested in a real world environment.