After more than six decades of research, the first atom-powered airplane is cleared for takeoff. Although details of the project remain classified, a description of this remarkable aircraft has begun to emerge from technical conferences and declassified engineering studies. The plane will be both familiar and unique. Familiar in that it will resemble a Northrop Grumman Global Hawk, the bulbous-nosed unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that the U.S. Air Force has used to track enemy movements in Afghanistan and Iraq. Unique because its nuclear reactor is unlike any other. Rather than split heavy elements or fuse light atoms--as in fission and fusion reactors--it will use what is known as a triggered isomer reaction. If this new powerplant, called a quantum nucleonic reactor, performs as scientists expect, its effect on the aircraft industry may prove as revolutionary as the introduction of the jet engine.

Our neighboring planets may someday be explored by aircraft with no motors or jets or props, but with solar-powered wings that flap and soar like an eagle.

Wickman Spacecraft & Propulsion Company has successfully tested a jet engine that burns carbon dioxide. The jet engine would "breathe" and burn the Martian atmosphere as it flies along, just like airplane jet engines breathe the air on earth. What makes this Martian jet engine unique is that the Mars atmosphere is 95% carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is commonly used in fire extinguishers to put out fires on earth. Wickman engineers have developed a system where magnesium powder can be burned directly with carbon dioxide. Magnesium is believed to exist in the soil of Mars and is abundant on earth. This new jet engine would be ideally suited for the Mars Airplane.

The US Air Force is examining the feasibility of a nuclear-powered version of an unmanned aircraft. The USAF hopes that such a vehicle will be able to "loiter" in the air for months without refuelling, striking at will when a target comes into its sights. Instead of a conventional fission reactor, the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is focusing on a type of power generator called a quantum nucleonic reactor. This obtains energy by using X-rays to encourage particles in the nuclei of radioactive hafnium-178 to jump down several energy levels, liberating energy in the form of gamma rays. A nuclear UAV would generate thrust by using the energy of these gamma rays to produce a jet of heated air.

ESA's Technology Transfer Programme is to supply state-of-the-art technologies to assist adventurer Bertrand Piccard's flight around the world in a single-pilot solar-powered aircraft, as the ultimate demonstration of the potential for pollution-free flight.

Here's a good trick: The gravityplane, brainchild of inventor Robert Hunter, will be able to change its density from lighter-than-air to heavier-than-air. The aircraft, still in development, will be similar to a submarine that changes its buoyancy, a form of gravity, to float on the surface of the sea or cruise 300 ft below it. If the design pans out, the plane won't need any fossil fuel and will have a virtually unlimited range.

While Spirit and Opportunity inch along the surface of Mars, engineers are working on a future robotic scout that trades in wheels for wings. Project ARES, which is both the Greek name for Mars as well as NASA's acronym for the Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey, was a candidate for the agency's first Mars Scout mission — a competitive, low-cost, highly focused science mission intended to enhance the agency's overall Mars exploration program. Managers opted for a lander instead of the airplane for the first Scout flight opportunity in 2007.

Remote-controlled balloons carrying armies of mini-robots could be filling Mars' skies if a project by Californian scientists takes off. Nasa-funded researchers are developing the StratoSail, a balloon with a wing, that can be accurately steered through Mars' winds for months.

Scientists in Switzerland are developing an ultra-lightweight plane which could soar through the skies of Mars in about a decade's time, with the help of balsa wood and model aircraft knowhow. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) chose the small solar-powered, "intelligent", glider as a low-cost but high technology project for the European Space Agency's (ESA) "Startiger III" technology programme, scientist Samir Bouabdallah said Wednesday.

While a United States spacecraft roams the surface of Mars, Swiss experts are involved in a new Mars mission being considered by the European Space Agency (ESA). Dubbed Sky-Sailor, the project involves designing a solar-powered plane that would fly around the red planet.

Morphing planes that change shape as they fly. Solar-powered aircraft that stay aloft for months. Insect-like robots flapping gossamer wings in the cold thin air of Mars. Elevators to Earth orbit. Affordable family weekends in space hotels. Aerial warfare among squadrons of pilotless drones. Flying spycams no bigger than mosquitoes. Jumbo jets with a thousand passengers. Hypersonic flights from New York to London in under an hour. The future of flight or merely flights of fancy?

Future planetary exploration may draw upon a rich history of aeronautical progress here on Earth -- from the Wright Brothers to centuries-old hot-air ballooning. Space engineers are charting novel ways to investigate Mars and other worlds in our solar system with innovative research underway to design robotic aerial craft that can plumb the atmospheric depths of Titan, a moon of Saturn, even slice through the clouds of Venus, or glide over the outer-planet gas giants.

Prototype gliders for long-distance flying on Mars have reached their testing phase. A seasoned soaring guide and former President of the US Hang Gliding Association, David Glover, talks about the challenges of soaring on Earth and potentially elsewhere.

Albuquerque-based Adherent Technologies Inc. has received a two-year, $600,000 NASA grant for work on inflatable wings for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) under Phase II of the space agency's Small Business Technology Transfer Research program. The UAV inflatable wings are like automobile airbags. When UAV shoots out of a cannon-like device, the lightweight wings pop out and provide increased gliding stability. UAVs with these inflatable wings could eventually be used for exploration of Mars and Venus, as well as for military applications.

Ever since the dawn of powered flight, it has been necessary for all aircraft to carry onboard fuel - whether in the form of batteries, fuel, solar cells, or even a human "engine" - in order to stay aloft. But a team of researchers from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards, Calif., and the University of Alabama in Huntsville is trying to change that.

Mars mania has subsided for most of us, but it's just beginning for one Australian National University scientist. Dr Javaan Chahl heads for California's Mojave Desert this week where he will demonstrate to NASA a prototype of what he hopes will be the future in planetary exploration. So far, mobile exploration of other worlds has been restricted to the Apollo moon buggies of the 1970s and unmanned Mars rovers like 1997's Sojourner. But ground-based exploration is slow and has limited range. The next generation of robotic explorers will soar in the pink Martian skies to pick out ground sites of interest.

NASA Langley's unmanned airplane will not soar across Mars. In a phone call Monday morning, scientists at Langley Research Center in Hampton learned that the ARES plane was not chosen as part of the Mars Scout mission, possibly because of the Columbia shuttle disaster. "I'm really shocked and disappointed that it's not ARES," said Joel S. Levine, principal investigator for the Mars airplane. "They did point out the reason we weren't selected was due to circumstances beyond our control, in part, NASA's growing concern with reducing risk."

A small airplane is being designed to fly in the alien atmosphere over the mountainous terrain of Mars in a project known as the Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey (ARES) at the NASA Langley Research Center. The ARES aircraft would be the first plane to fly in the atmosphere of another planet if it is successful in both its August selection by NASA Headquarters and its 2007 launch, 7-month, 250-million mile journey, and 2008 entry into the Martian atmosphere.

A team of undergraduate engineering students from the University of Kentucky scored a partial success in a recent test of a prototype Mars exploration aircraft whose wings would inflate to take on their aerodynamic shape once within the thin martian atmosphere. Inflatable wings are seen as a promising solution for a vexing problem facing NASA engineers: building an aircraft that can be successfully unfurled or unfolded into its flight configuration after being stowed within the tight confines of a space capsule for the long journey to the red planet. The problem has twice abruptly halted NASA efforts to develop a glider or powered aircraft to explore Mars.

Soon, a small aircraft laden with sensors and a high-speed datalink could be flying over the mountains of Mars - the first aircraft to fly over the terrain of another world. Called Ares (Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey of Mars), it could, if all goes well, be flying over the Red Planet's southern uplands in just five years' time. After a successful series of half-scale tests, the US space agency (Nasa) has ordered a full-scale prototype to be built. Ares is in competition with three other Mars exploration proposals for a Nasa launch in 2007. The final selection of one, or possibly two, missions will be made later this year.

NASA's Revolutionary Aeropropulsion Concepts programme is aiming to produce a fuel cell-powered aircraft the size of a Boeing 737 with zero CO2 emissions. 'We think that fuel cells offer the greater long-term benefit if they can be made to work because they have a higher inherent thermal efficiency than conventional aircraft engines,' said Peter McCallum, deputy head of NASA's propulsion and power projects.

Tomorrow a high-altitude balloon will rise to the edge of space, bringing with it a small glider. Under the space-black sky 100,000 feet above Earth, the glider will sprout a pair of inflatable wings from its sides. Ultraviolet rays from the Sun will harden them to flight readiness. It's a scenario that may someday be used to send a winged planetary explorer to Mars. If so, some of the more than 40 students at the University of Kentucky who have designed and developed this glider just might have a hand in making it happen.

The US Air Force is reported to be examining the feasibility of a nuclear-powered version of an unmanned aircraft. The revelations come in the latest issue of New Scientist published Feb 22. According to the report, 'The USAF hopes that such a vehicle will be able to "loiter" in the air for months without refuelling, striking at will when a target comes into its sights."

Having demonstrated its capabilities on a vast array of flight vehicle applications here on Earth, Athena Technologies' patented flight control algorithms may be used to fly a planetary research aircraft on Mars. NASA announced on Friday it has chosen Athena client NASA Langley Research Center of Hampton, Virginia as one of four team finalists for the first Mars Scout mission, planned for launch in 2007.

Flying a plane on Mars would let us survey the Valles Marineris and search for signs of water, helping to determine if life exists or once existed there. CAD software is playing a key role in the design of an airplane intended to provide a quantum jump in Mars exploration by flying on the Red Planet.

High above the Oregon coast yesterday, a futuristic class of Mars exploration technology took wing. The MarsFlyer -- a one-half scale prototype of a NASA craft that one day may zip across Martian skies -- made the first in a series of shakeout sojourns. The craft is dubbed the Eagle.

Flying 100,000 feet above the Oregon coast yesterday, a new kind of aircraft demonstrated the readiness of robotic airplane technology for Mars exploration. The MarsFlyer, designed and manufactured by Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation, Manassas, Va., is a one-half scale prototype of a NASA aircraft that may one day soar over the red planet returning unique science knowledge on Mars' atmosphere, surface, and interior. Today's flight was the first in a series of high-altitude tests confirming the aircraft's ability to deploy its wings and tail, and demonstrate aerodynamic performance. Led by the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., Aurora is part of a team of industry, academia, and national laboratories working for the past three years to prepare robotic aircraft technology for scientific application on Mars.

An unmanned aircraft capable of staying airborne for up to two weeks is to be developed by Boeing for the US military. The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) will be powered by a hydrogen fuel cell and could be ready for take-off by 2004, according to George Muellner, director of Boeing's Air Force programmes.

Understanding the aerodynamics that allow insects and hummingbirds to fly is the key to an invention that researchers hope will create a little buzz and a lot of flap. Biologists and technologists at the University of California, Berkeley have spent the past four years developing a tiny robot, called the Micromechanical Flying Insect, that they say will one day fly like a fly. Other projects are taking different paths, but the goal is the same: churn out tiny, nimble devices that can surreptitiously spy on enemy troops, explore the surface of Mars or safely monitor dangerous chemical spills.

American adventurer Steve Fossett flew a glider over New Zealand on Tuesday in preparation to soar into the stratosphere, but a local pilot warned the weather forecast did not look good for Fossett's bid to break the gliding altitude record. Fossett, 58, and retired NASA test pilot Einar Enevoldson, 70, want to soar to the stratosphere at 19,000 meters (62,000 feet) — nearly twice the altitude at which commercial passenger jets fly. If they succeed, they plan to build a specially pressurized glider and fly it to 30,480 meters (100,000 feet) sometime in coming years. NASA is interested in Fossett's long-term goal of taking a glider as high as 30,480 meters (100,000 feet) because at that altitude, the air density is the same as on Mars, and the agency believes it can learn lessons for any future flight over the red planet.

Canadian and American scientists plan to put an unmanned aircraft through a series of test maneuvers over an Arctic impact crater in hopes of learning more about how to fly missions through Martian skies. "A Mars airplane project will look very different from this one," said Emily Lakdawalla, project coordinator with the Planetary Society, of Pasadena, Calif., which is sponsoring the test flights along with NASA's Ames Research Center and aircraft manufacturer MicroPilot, a division of Loewen Aviation of Canada. "However, both projects involve making choices about observational targets that are interesting from a scientific standpoint and safe from an engineering standpoint -- a choice that must be made with every remote sensing mission," Lakdawalla said in an interview with United Press International.

From July 17 to 24, 2002, The Planetary Society will team up with NASA Ames Research Center, the SETI Institute, and MicroPilot to fly an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) over Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic in simulated Mars exploration. The airborne scientific investigations of this remote region will coincide with the anniversary of two milestone events in space exploration history - the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon in 1969 and Viking 1 landing on Mars in 1976, both on July 20th.

To better reconnoiter the Red Planet, scientists and engineers see high-tech robotic aircraft offering unique advantages. One innovative glider design, currently undergoing trial runs, is built to deploy instruments in scientifically rewarding but tough-to-get-to spots on Mars. The remotely operated 8-foot (2.4 meter) flying wing is one of several projects a group of independent scientists and engineers are working on preparing. The objective: to construct safe, smart, and autonomous landing vehicles and systems for investigating Mars and other worlds.

Scientists and engineers tested a prototype Mars robotic plane part of The Mother Goose mission. The Mother Goose plane is basically an 8 foot remotely operated wing that can do some pretty amazing things like a near zero velocity landing. Someday the plane will be much larger sporting a 65 foot wingspan, inflatable with a fold-up propeller. Then it will become more like a UAV autonomous robot for flying around mars, that can even land, or even drop tiny robots or instruments.

Motivated by the notion that the Mars landscape may prove easier to navigate by air than with ground-based rovers, NASA is backing a research project to build toy-sized flying robots, modeled on the entomology of insects, that can hover like helicopters. Patented as "entomopters," the robots are on the drawing board of University of Missouri professor Kakkattukuzhy Isaac. "We are looking mainly at the dragonfly, the hummingbird and the fruit fly, but we are not trying to mimic one particular insect," said Isaac, who is assisted on the project by graduate student Pavan Shivaram. "Instead we are identifying the principles that enable insects to create such high lift, which is still not completely understood. That is our main task."

Aircraft weighing as little as a chocolate bar could one day be darting over the surface of Mars with the agility of dragonflies and the eyes of bees. Australia-based scientists say they have developed navigational and flight control devices based on research into several types of insects. The resulting sensors are so small they can be placed on "microflyers" weighing just 75 grams. The team of researchers at the Australian National University won over Nasa during a test flight of a prototype last week and the US space agency has agreed to help finance further work.

Scientists at the University of Missouri are helping NASA evaluate the feasibility of using tiny flying robots as part of future Mars probes to gather information about the planet. K.M. Isaac, a professor of aerospace engineering at the university's Rolla campus, said Wednesday he is supervising an aerodynamic study of computer simulations for a robot named "Entomopter," a combination of the words entomology or insect study and helicopter. The Ohio Aerospace Institute and the Georgia Institute of Technology also are helping NASA with initial evaluations of the robot. "What they're interested in is mapping the terrain of Mars," Issac told United Press International. "The current thinking is the (next-generation) Mars Rover will land, and from there these Entomopters will fly in a circle about a mile from the rover, very close to the surface." The swarm of robots would transmit different types of data back to the rover, depending on what sort of sensor -- i.e. cameras or radiation detectors -- they carried, Isaac said. The robots also could conceivably land and take soil samples, he said. Successful designs will be as lightweight and small as possible.

They are tiny but talented…and not the bug-eyed Martians of sci-fi fare. Clear the air for the entomopter! This beast of burden may carry out flight duties flapping smartly through the thin, carbon dioxide-laden atmosphere of Mars. Billed as a revolutionary new class of refuelable robotic flying machine, aerospace engineers envision a fleet of the patented mechanical insects fluttering over Mars' surface, each toting scientific sensors from spot to spot. Thanks to their aerial attributes, the micro-machines could scout out terrain well ahead of robot rovers. Future human explorers might also unleash such devices to relay back an eagle eye's view of landscape yet to be traversed.

One of the oldest forms of flight -- the flapping wings of insects -- may support a revolutionary new class of robotic flying machine uniquely suited for exploring a brave new world: the planet Mars. The thin Mars atmosphere, composed mostly of carbon dioxide and lacking oxygen for combustion, provides an inhospitable environment for conventional aircraft and helicopters. Compounding the challenge are size constraints imposed by the spacecraft delivering air vehicles to Mars. But the flapping wing "Entomopter," a patented mechanical insect capable of both flying and crawling, may be ideal for meeting the demanding requirements of Mars aerial exploration.

A solar-powered flying wing soared past previous altitude records for non-rocket powered aircraft Monday, and NASA officials hoped it would reach a maximum height of 100,000 feet.

NASA's solar-powered Helios experimental aircraft lifted off from a U.S. Navy base on the Hawaiian island of Kauai on Monday, reaching a height of 96,500 feet. The $15 million aircraft failed in its attempt to reach an altitude of 100,000 feet, but it broke a record set by its predecessor, the Pathfinder Plus, for 80,201 feet for solar-powered and propeller-driven aircraft in 1998. "It's a real milestone of flight," NASA spokesman Alan Brown said. "It's a landmark achievement, and especially to do it with a solar aircraft that is nonpolluting. It is a triumph of technology in this area." The radio-controlled Helios craft, which cruises at speeds of 19 to 25 mph, can reach 103,000 feet under ideal weather conditions, its designers say. It could even be used to fly above Mars, NASA says.

NASA has tested a prototype of an airplane that may one day fly across the surface of Mars. During the August 9 test, National Aeronautics and Space Administration engineers used a helium balloon to haul the glider to 103,000 feet. At that altitude, the atmosphere is as thin as it is on Mars. The plane was then dropped. After an initial 13,000-foot plunge, the plane swooped out of its steep dive into stable flight. Flying for the most part on autopilot, the plane took two hours and 22 minutes to spiral down to a landing in the grass at Oregon's Tillamook Airport. It reached a top speed of Mach .82, or slightly less than the speed of sound.

Soaring gracefully down to Earth from a balloon floating 103,000 feet high above Oregon, a NASA prototype of an airplane that someday may fly over Mars successfully completed a high-altitude flight test August 9. Conducted at Oregon’s Tillamook airport by the Kitty Hawk 3 project at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, the test was designed to validate the aerodynamic performance of the prototype. Nicknamed "Orville" after one of the famed Wright brothers who first flew on Dec. 17, 1903, the NASA 731 glider was dropped from a helium-filled balloon that towed it up to an altitude of 101,000 feet — the highest ever for such a test - before releasing it. Engineers and scientists hailed the test as a great success. "Mars has always fascinated people," said Larry Lemke, an aerospace engineer at NASA Ames who serves as Ames’ project manager for advanced Mars mobility concepts, which include airplanes as well as other systems. "Every time we send a mission up there, we come back with fascinating discoveries."

A new world's altitude record for a non-rocket-powered aircraft could be achieved over Hawaii this weekend by the NASA-sponsored Helios Prototype solar-electric flying wing. Engineers estimate the aircraft could reach at least 95,000 feet on this mission with 100,000 feet still a possibility, well above the current record of 85,068 feet for sustained horizontal flight set by a SR-71 in 1966.

A deployable, inflatable wing technology demonstrator experiment has flown at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif. The inflatable wing project represents a basic flight research effort by Dryden personnel. Recalling Hugh Dryden's vision for the purpose of flight research, Jeff Bauer, manager of Dryden's inflatable aircraft project, noted "With these tests we have put some reality behind the many imagined applications for inflatable winged aircraft."

When U.S. space scientists send a $15 million, solar-powered experimental plane into the skies over Hawaii sometime in July, it will achieve top speeds no faster than a bicycle, powered by 14 electric motors not much stronger than hair dryers. But NASA project scientists hope the Helios prototype -- which appears to be made of a translucent wing 250 feet long and looking like a flying boomerang -- will shatter altitude records, help them understand how to fly on Mars and ultimately pioneer a new era in satellites.

NASA has scrapped plans to fly an airplane on Mars on Dec. 17, 2003 -- the 100th anniversary to the day of the Wright brothers' first powered flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C.

NASA Adninstrator Dan Goldin has announced that the space agency will fly a robotic airplane on Mars in 2003, and that $50 million has been allocated in this years' budget to prepare such a mission. The airplane, which will be driven by a propeller and thus be directable to take aerial photographs of Mars spectacular scenery, will make its debut on the Red Planet almost exactly 100 years after the Wright brothers first flight at Kitty Hawk.

NASA hopes to mark the 100th anniversy of the Wright Brothers first powered flight with announced this week it will pursue a project that will culminate in a flight of an airplane in the thin atmosphere of Mars on December 17, 2003, 100 years to the day since Kitty Hawk.

An ambitious plan to fly an aircraft in the Martian atmosphere is one project the American space agency Nasa has requested funding for in its new budget.

When NASA launched the Pathfinder mission last summer, the world got a glimpse of the Martian surface. Now, we may get an even closer look at the planet with the help of a custom-built plane.

Four leading space groups are proposing to fly a robot-controlled airplane over the “Grand Canyon” of Mars in 2003, on the 100th anniversary of the first airplane flight. The plan to survey Valles Marineris is among 29 proposals under consideration for funding through NASA’s Discovery program. Only a handful of missions will make the cut.