NASA Orders Prototype Martian Airplane

After a series of successful tests with a half-sized prototype, NASA has ordered a full-scale prototype of the Ares (Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey of Mars), aircraft, designed to help explore the surface of Mars. If all goes well, the aircraft will be launched to Mars in 2007. When it arrives in 2008, it will enter the atmosphere, deploy its wings and fly 850 kilometres along a route that takes it past the terrain that NASA scientists want to observe.