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Category: space travel – Page 487

At 1.40am this morning, China launched a new Space Race with the world’s first quantum satellite, recently named Micius after an ancient Chinese philosopher and engineer, who, more than 2,400 years ago, proposed that light always travelled in a straight line and that the physical world was made up by particles. Quantum teleportation technology would be able to eliminate the 20-minute time delay in communication between earth and Mars and would allow tiny spacecraft to send back images and videos of planets many light years away without the need to carry a huge antenna. It could even give us a glimpse of what’s inside a black hole.

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The one thing still holding us back from interstellar travel is our slow spacecraft and researcher are working on solving this. With our present technology, it will take around five months to reach Mars. But NASA scientist Philip Lubin is working on a system where lasers propel spaceship with massive sails to the Red Planet in only a time period of three days.

Pretty much like Bill Nye’s much-hyped solar sail, this ‘photonic propulsion’ system count on on the momentum of photons to move forward. But as an alternative of photons from the Sun’s rays, Lubin’s system would use a push by huge Earth-based lasers.

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Last month, NASA announced the winner of its 3D Printed Habitat Challenge, a competition in which entrants were tasked to develop architectural concepts. These concepts were to implement 3D printing techniques for the construction of habitats on Mars, using materials that could be sourced from the Red Planet itself.

The 3D Printed Habitat Challenge received 165 submissions, with the thirty highest scoring entries being displayed at the New York Maker Faire on September 27th. The overall winner and recipient of the $25,000 grand prize was Team Space Exploration Architecture and Clouds Architecture Office with their Mars Ice House design. The runners up were Team Gamma, who received $15,000, whilst third place was awarded to Team LavaHive.

“The creativity and depth of the designs we’ve seen have impressed us,” said Centennial Challenges Program Manager Monsi Roman. “These teams were not only imaginative and artistic with their entries, but they also really took into account the life-dependent functionality our future space explorers will need in an off-Earth habitat.”

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Continuing on with NASA’s trend of contracting work out to private companies, they have just started accepting bids and designs to create space habitats. The habitat selected will eventually house astronauts in future space missions, and possibly those that go to Mars. In their initial announcement, NASA has shown 6 different companies along with each’s design. This is all part of the NextSTEP-3 program.

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Mars Cube One (MarCO) Mission Overview Engineers for NASA’s MarCO technology demonstration check out a full-scale mechanical mock-up of the small craft in development as part of NASA’s next mission to Mars. Mechanical engineer Joel Steinkraus and systems engineer Farah Alibay are on the team at NASA…

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Commercial space travel is about to become a reality brought about by many private companies bent on taking their earthbound successes into space. The FAA is now open to granting permits to private companies to travel into space. It is hoped that this activity will lead to the colonization of Mars.

Elon Musk of SpaceX has the goal of beginning the colonization of Mars in the next decade. He plans to make commercial space travel and colonization a reality in his lifetime, according to The Washington Post. Mr. Musk is the mastermind behind both Tesla and SpaceX. He is one of the most brilliant minds of our time. An innovator and businessman, Elon has a track record of making dreams a reality and turning his plans into tangible results. Comparing his project to the colonization of America, Mr. Musk explains why he thinks people will agree to move to mars.

“The months-long journey is sure to be hard, risky, dangerous, difficult, [but] just as with the establishment of the English colonies, there are people who love that. They want to be the pioneers.”

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It’s a scouting mission. I wonder how much this will cost since this is not a sample return.

Asteroid mining company Deep Space Industries (DSI) has announced the first commercial mission to a near-Earth asteroid, with launch planned by the end of the decade.

deep space industries

Deep Space Industries has announced its plans to fly the world’s first commercial interplanetary mining mission. A spacecraft known as “Prospector-1” will fly to and rendezvous with a near-Earth asteroid, investigate the object and determine its value as a source of space resources. This mission will be an important step in the company’s longer term plans to harvest and supply in-space resources to support the growing space economy.

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