NASA is set to test its Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) Saturday over the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to simulate a landing on the surface of Mars.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the saucer-shaped device is designed to land a heavy object softly on the Martian surface despite a strong gravitational pull. Mark Adler, the LDSD project chief and an engineer and project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and his team chose the Hawaiian island of Kauai for a specific reason.

Adler told the Times he and his LDSD team have been examining high winds in the Earths' atmosphere for two years. He determined that the Pacific Missile Range Facility on the western tip of Kauai should be the ideal setting.

After several setbacks due to the unpredictable nature of weather, especially winds high in the Earth's atmosphere, the team settled on Saturday, June 28.

"We're testing technologies that will enable us to land bigger payloads, much heavier payloads, at higher altitude and with more accuracy than we've ever been able to do before," Ian Clark, LDSD's principal investigator, told BBC News.

Because Mars' atmosphere is so thin - nearly dissipated - anything entering will not get any sort of buffer on the way down, meaning an object can easily burn up before even hitting ground. NASA plans to land items heavier than the Curiosity rover on Mars, making the LDSD absolutely necessary.

According to a JPL press release, the LDSD is set to lift off at 8:15 a.m. Hawaiian time, 11:15 a.m. PDT and 2:15 p.m. EDT. The LDSD will carry a test vehicle about 120,000 feet in the air, taking several hours to reach the climax. When the balloon releases the vehicle, its rocket will bring it to an altitude of 180,000 feet.

Traveling downward at a speed of approximately Mach 3.8, the vehicle will deploy a donut-shaped Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (SIAD). That will slow the vehicle to about Mach 2.5, at which point the Supersonic Disk Sail Parachute is released. The vehicle should touch down on the Pacific about 40 minutes after the balloon releases the vehicle.

"The supersonic parachute we're testing is enormous," Clark told BBC News. "It's 100ft (30m) in diameter; it generates two-and-a-half times the drag of any previous parachute we've sent to Mars. We're going to use it at a velocity that's faster than we've used a parachute at Mars. We're really going to push it to the edge where the materials themselves, the nylons and Kevlars that the parachute is made of, may start melting.

"We don't know; that's why we do this testing."