NASA, which is always beaming with fresh activity, is now reportedly gearing to test the capability of a winged prototype drone to accompany the Mars 2020 rover for conducting aerial surveys of the Red planet.

This latest prototype to be tested is the Preliminary Research Aerodynamic Design or Prandtl-m and has been designed and built by engineering students as part of a NASA internship program.

Its first test will be conducted later this year. In the test run, the prototype will be released from a high altitude balloon at 100,000 feet in order to replicate the height of the Martian atmospheric conditions. This will be followed by one or two additional test flights which will test some scientific instruments on the Prandtl-m.

Al Bowers, NASA Armstrong chief scientist and Prandtl-m program manager informed, "The aircraft would be part of the ballast that would be ejected from the aero shell that takes the Mars rover to the planet. It would be able to deploy and fly in the Martian atmosphere and glide down and land".

Bowers added that the Prandtl-m could overfly some of the proposed landing sites for a future astronaut mission and could send back to Earth, very detailed high resolution photographic map images that could inform scientists about the suitability of those landing sites.

The recent popularity of Drones can be attributed to the fact that these winged machines are relatively inexpensive to build, launch and are expendable and have the potential to accelerate the ability of the world's space agencies to explore the solar system.