A small, unmanned aircraft that would deploy from a cubesat released by a Mars lander as it enters the planet's atmosphere is being studied by NASA. The flying-wing UAV could reconnoiter for future astronaut landing sites as it descends to the Martian surface. The Prandtl-M unmanned aircraft is a new direction for research into an old configuration at NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center. The design is named after German engineer Ludwig Prandtl, who developed many of the key theories of aerodynamics. Using subscale models, the project set out to prove Prandtl's theory that adverse yawing of an aircraft in a turn could be overcome with wingtip aerodynamics alone, without requiring vertical tails or rudders.
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