Nasa is launching a spacecraft that strongly resembles a flying saucer. For more than half a century the distinctive shape has exerted a powerful grip over the popular imagination.

Fasten your space helmet and set your chrome-plated ray gun to "retro-futurist". There's a disc-shaped design classic hovering overhead.

From 1950s B-movies to latter-day pastiches, the flying saucer has served as visual shorthand for the gleaming, jet-propelled, post-war vision of the future.

Now Nasa is preparing to test the distinctly saucer-shaped Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD), which the agency hopes could one day land on Mars.


[link to www.bbc.co.uk]