DHAKA: US space agency Nasa sent a saucer-like vehicle high into the sky on Saturday to test technology for a future Mars landing, but its parachute tangled when deployed and the spacecraft splashed into the Pacific Ocean.

The test began when the space agency attached its ‘Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator’ vehicle to a helium balloon the size of a football field, the largest ever deployed, at a military base on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

The balloon carried the saucer high into the sky starting at 1840 GMT. Nasa television broadcast the event live, The Straits Times publishes this report on Sunday.

After some 2.5 hours of ascent, when the balloon reached a height of 36,600 metres, it detached the saucer, which fired its rocket engine and rose to 54,900 metres travelling at 3.8 times the speed of sound.

At that point the engine was cut off and Nasa began its first test - deploying a doughnut-shaped inflatable device around the saucer dubbed the ‘Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator’.

This successfully slowed the saucer's descent to 2.5 times the speed of sound.

BDST: 1443 HRS, JUNE 29, 2014