Wright Stuff On Mars

To honor the Wright Brothers’ first airplane flight, NASA wants to duplicate the event - sort of - on Mars. NASA’s budget for 2000 contains $50 million to begin development of a Mars airplane. A tentative design shows a small, pilotless plane that parachutes toward the sandy surface, unfolds its wings and propeller, and putters off. But Mars’ atmosphere is much thinner than Earth’s, NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin said, so much research still needs to be done. There’s also an eight-minute lag for radio messages between Earth and Mars, complicating control of the plane. NASA hopes to make the flight in 2003, the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers flight, but officials say the target could slip to 2005.