Plans for a new Mars lander have been inspired, at least in part, by one the funniest-looking, extraordinarily-defended sea creatures on Earth.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration says new technology for future missions to Mars mimics the behavior of the pufferfish, which defends itself by quickly ingesting huge amounts of water to turn itself into a virtual ball several times its normal size, with poisonous spines protruding all around.

Scientists and engineers with the space agency didn't take their cues from the fish's spines as much as its ability to rapidly inflate -- an element that could prove crucial to the future of space exploration, according to a NASA news release.

NASA's puffer-prompted Low Density Supersonic Decelerator mission, or LDSD, currently under development at the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, will hopefully answer how to safely land heavier spacecraft on Mars, or, put another way, successfully decelerating large payloads traveling at supersonic speeds in thin atmospheres to a point where they won't be destroyed upon impact.

NASA explains the current method for decelerating payloads, which was used as recently as 2012 when the Curiosity rover landed on the Red Planet, dates back to the Viking Program, which placed two landers on Mars in 1976.

However, future missions to Mars, first robotic and later manned, will require much larger payloads that anything sent to the rocky Martian surface before.

Scheduled for a test launch in early June from the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii, the LDSD will use the balloon-like Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator vessel to test its new braking technology.

To approximate the most important aspects of Mars' thin atmosphere, NASA plans to push the SIAD up to the earth's own air-thin stratosphere.

After being carried up to about 120,000 feet by a massive, specially-designed balloon, the test unit will disengage from the balloon and be propelled by a solid-fuel rocket to supersonic speeds, Mach 4.

Then the unit's inflatable decelerators will activate, and attempt to slow down the test article enough to where it's safe to deploy a parachute.

The balloon and test article will soon after that be recovered from the ocean.

NASA has identified six potential launch dates for the balloon carrying LDSD: June 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 14. The June 3 launch window extends from 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. HST, or 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. EDT. The test can be viewed live on NASA TV beginning at 7:45 a.m. HST (1:45 p.m. EDT) or online at https://www.nasa.gov/ntv.