NASA completed its test run for the future Mars lander Saturday and the space agency reported its Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) was a success.

According to NBC News, the saucer-like lander successfully made a hard landing in the Pacific Ocean after taking off from the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii. NASA hopes to one day land something bigger and heavier than the Curiosity rover on Mars and LDSD will be the vehicle to do it.

"We are thrilled about yesterday's test," Mark Adler, project manager for LDSD at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., said in a press release. "The test vehicle worked beautifully, and we met all of our flight objectives. We have recovered all the vehicle hardware and data recorders and will be able to apply all of the lessons learned from this information to our future flights."

CLICK HERE to watch videos from the test flight.

The first of three test flights, Saturday's was only meant to show off the vehicle's ability to fly and the two landing technologies were a bonus. On its way down, LDSD deployed to parachutes and landed the test vehicle in the Pacific Ocean as planned.

LDSD is equipped with the Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (SIAD) and the Supersonic Disk Sail parachute, also referred to as the enormous parachute.

"Because our vehicle flew so well, we had the chance to earn 'extra credit' points with the Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator [SIAD]," Ian Clark, principal investigator for LDSD at JPL, said in the release. "All indications are that the SIAD deployed flawlessly, and because of that, we got the opportunity to test the second technology, the enormous supersonic parachute, which is almost a year ahead of schedule."

One of the parachutes did not deploy, causing the hard landing in the Pacific, but NASA was not planning to officially test the two landing technologies Saturday.

"This entire effort was just fantastic work by the whole team and is a proud moment for NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate," Dorothy Rasco, deputy associate administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in the release. "This flight reminds us why NASA takes on hard technical problems, and why we test - to learn and build the tools we will need for the future of space exploration. Technology drives exploration, and yesterday's flight is a perfect example of the type of technologies we are developing to explore our solar system."

Related