Nasa parachute fails to inflate in test flight to land larger vehicles on Mars

The space agency's trials over Hawaii are meant to experiment with ways to send more sophisticated robots and eventually humans to red planet

Nasa let loose a flying saucer into the sky over Hawaii on Monday in order to test a donut-like airbag and its largest parachute ever, but the device did not inflate.

After several days of delays, the space agency launched its Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator mission, which may help land vehicles on to Mars, from the island of Kauai. But while the chute deployed, Nasa said the balloon above the saucer-shaped test vehicle did not inflate.