We all know that real space travel and space colonization will not be achieved without the hard work, passion, and courage of people willingly taking risks for the greater good of humanity.

However, we can put all our hearts into deep space missions but won’t succeed unless we also provide the technological innovations needed. Let’s say, that thermal radiation isn’t our biggest enemy in space (literally roasting and melting our astronauts), speed and time are still affecting us the most. Mars, which is only a mere six months of travel time away from Earth, is certainly manageable, but getting to the outer parts of our own solar system already took some 10 years to accomplish.

So, it’s obvious why sci-fi avoids any further questioning by putting space explorers in sleep mode. In reality, shutting down humans is hard to do, whereas keeping a body alive in suspension mode is tricky, to say the least.

In order to boldly go where no man has gone before we first need to sort out a few things — achieving near-relativistic speeds is certainly one of it. Space travel would allow humanity to explore all the new worlds, visit other galaxies and more so, seek out new life.

Right now NASA scientists are weighing in on that subject again, claiming that the cutting-edge technologies needed to making this pipe dream a reality are getting closer by the day.

Imagine getting to Mars in just 3 days… or putting points beyond our solar system within our reach. New propulsion technologies could one day take us to these cosmic destinations making space travel truly interstellar! — Philip Lubin

New Horizons has made observations it was never tasked with making; serendipity of the sort that may lead to new and better astronomical missions to observe the distant cosmos from the outer fringes of the solar system, where it’s darkest and astronomers would have the clearest, dust-free view of our own galaxy and the optical light from the universe as a whole.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has unexpectedly made observations of optical light from beyond our Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers are ecstatic and hoping for more.

April 11 (UPI) — Scientists have struggled to define the upper limit of the cosmic optical background, the total amount of light produced by all of the galaxies in the universe. But new observations from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft have allowed astronomers to place a ceiling on the measurement.

“Determining how much light comes from all the galaxies beyond our own Milky Way galaxy has been a stubborn challenge in observational astrophysics,” Michael Zemcov, an assistant professor of astrophysics at the Rochester Institute of Technology, said in a news release.

The reflection of the sunlight off interplanetary space dust makes the task of measuring the cosmic optical background from Earth quite difficult.

NASA will present new discoveries about the ocean worlds in our solar system on Thursday, the agency announced. Learning more about ocean worlds could help in the agency’s quest for life beyond Earth.

The findings were gathered by researchers through the Hubble Space Telescope and Cassini spacecraft. Cassini has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, and the mission ends this year.

“During its time at Saturn, Cassini has made numerous dramatic discoveries, including a global ocean that showed indications of hydrothermal activity within the icy moon Enceladus, and liquid methane seas on its moon Titan,” NASA said in a release.