If you’ve always wanted to retire to Mars,
your dreams just got a little more realistic.
On Tuesday, SpaceX announced its plans to
colonize Mars!
While NASA is planning to send a few astronauts
to visit Mars in the 2030s, SpaceX CEO Elon
Musk announced that his company will send
people to the Red Planet within the next decade.
Here’s their plan:
A crew of about a hundred people will blast
off on a new SpaceX launch system called the
Interplanetary Transportation System, which
consists of a booster and a crew capsule.
It’s set to go into production within the
next few years.
The booster is powered by forty-two Raptor
engines and uses methane and oxygen for fuel.
The Raptor engine is three times more powerful
than SpaceX’s current engine, Merlin, and
completed its first firing test on Monday.
Once in space, the booster and crew capsule
will separate.
The booster will return to Earth, landing
back where it started: On the launch pad SpaceX
has been renting since 2013 — the same one
used by Apollo 11, the first mission to land
humans on the moon.
While the crewed spacecraft hangs out in orbit,
a propellant tanker filled with extra fuel
will be loaded onto the booster.
Then, it’ll blast off again.
Once in orbit, the tanker will rendezvous
with the crewed spacecraft to fuel it, then
will return to Earth again.
The tanker will make anywhere between three
and five refueling trips before the spacecraft
is ready to go.
This may seems adding extra steps, but by
fueling in orbit, the transport system can
use a smaller two-stage rocket instead of
a three-stage one that would have to be much
bigger and cost a lot more money.
Once it’s fueled, the spacecraft will head
off to Mars, reaching a cruising speed of
more than 100,000 kilometers per hour.
Around four months later, the spacecraft will
land on Mars, using thrusters for a slow,
controlled landing.
It’ll be nice to have made it, but SpaceX
doesn’t plan to make these trips one-way.
When the craft is to ready to leave, it’ll
refuel on the Martian surface!
Since Mars has a mainly carbon dioxide atmosphere
and a lot of water ice, they’ll break down
these materials with a small propellant plant
and create more methane and oxygen fuel to
power the craft.
And because Mars has much weaker gravity than
Earth, they won’t need a big booster to
get it into orbit.
The first manned flight to Mars could be as
early as 2023, and eventually, Musk wants
to send hundreds or even thousands of ships
to build a colony of up to a million people.
Of course, there are all kinds of challenges
SpaceX needs to overcome before they can send
/anyone/ to Mars.
For one thing, they have to get the launch
system to work — including all those landings
and re-launches to refuel in orbit.
They’ll also need to build that propellant
plant on Mars so they can send people home.
So there’s a lot that still needs to be
done before any of this can become a reality.
But someday, you might be able to book a trip
to Mars on a SpaceX ship.
And they don’t plan to stop with Mars — eventually,
the Transport System could also be used to
visit Jupiter’s moons, like Europa.
Speaking of Europa, NASA announced Monday
that they’ve found new evidence for water
plumes on its surface!
Europa is a little smaller than our Moon,
but it has an ocean that holds twice the amount
of water as all the oceans on Earth combined.
It’s one of the most life-friendly places
in our solar system, besides Earth.
Problem is, that ocean is covered in a sheet
of ice that’s kilometers thick.
NASA hopes to someday land on Europa and takes
samples from its ocean, but to get through
the ice, that spacecraft would have to carry
heavy, expensive drilling equipment.
And heavy equipment means more rocket fuel,
which means an even more expensive mission.
But in 2012, NASA observed water plumes erupting
more than 200 kilometers high near Europa’s
south pole.
Unfortunately, the data seemed inconsistent,
and they needed more research to figure out
exactly what they were seeing.
If these plumes did exist, though, we wouldn’t
need any drilling equipment to get to Europa’s
ocean.
All we’d need to do is fly by the surface
and drop a robot in a plume!
A mission to Europa would become much more
affordable — and realistic.
And on Monday, NASA announced they’ve found
more evidence these plumes really do exist!
The research team used the Hubble Space Telescope
to observe Europa as it passed in front of
Jupiter.
Not only did they see plumes, but they saw
them in the same place the 2012 team did,
down near Europa’s south pole.
One of the reasons the data has been so hard
to confirm is because the plumes don’t operate
on a regular schedule.
Of the 10 times the team observed Europa looking
for plumes, they only saw them three times.
NASA will keep observing the plumes using
Hubble, and continue collecting data with
the James Webb Space Telescope once it launches
in 2018.
And even though NASA isn’t ready to land
on Europa any time soon, a fly-by mission
is in the early planning stages.
It would launch in the 2020s.
If NASA decides to move forward with the mission,
it should be able to fly through one of Europa’s
plumes and collect a sample if the opportunity
arises.
So, between the Hubble and Webb data and the
possibility of a flyby mission, it looks like
we’ll be learning a lot more about Europa
for years to come.
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