March in 45 days? NASA's Crazy New Project To Quickly Reach The Red Planet
While all eyes are on the Moon, NASA already has Mars in its sights. A new type of technology studied by NASA would allow us to reach the red planet in an extremely short time.
After the Moon , Mars? This seems to be the plan led by NASA and the other world space agencies. In 2022, the first stage of the Artemis program has been successfully completed, and the return of our species to the Moon seems closer than ever. But landing on our natural satellite is one thing, landing on Mars is another. As the distance that separates us from the red planet is much greater (384,400 km for the Moon, and at least several tens of millions of kilometers for Mars), the journey is longer, more expensive and more dangerous... But a new type of propulsion could greatly reduce the cost, risk and duration of the trip.
The trip to Mars is risky
Technology may have made giant strides since Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon, but interplanetary travel is still nowhere near as sweet as in our science fiction movies. Today, sending a shuttle to Mars would take about six months: do the math, and you'll find that the shortest mission would take at least a year.
This travel time is bad news in many ways. On the one hand, this means a lot of physical and mental fatigue for the astronauts, and on the other hand, it exposes them to dangerous radiation for moderately long periods of time , in addition to multiplying the health risks that a trip to space can engender. Shortening the duration of the journey would therefore only have advantages , but to achieve this, it is necessary to find a more efficient means of propulsion than that which is used today by NASA.
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Bimodal nuclear propulsion
And if the solution came from the atom? As part of its NIAC innovation program, NASA has just selected the propulsion concept of Pr. Ryan Gosse, from the University of Florida. With his team, this professor intends to design a “revolutionary” method of propulsion based on nuclear power: bimodal nuclear propulsion .
“Bimodal”, because this system is based on two technologies, thermal nuclear propulsion and electric nuclear propulsion. The Born to Engineer site explains:
“Nuclear thermal propulsion (PNT) uses a powerful combination: it transforms liquid hydrogen heated by an on-board reactor into plasma, then expels it through nozzles to produce thrust. Nuclear-electric propulsion (NEP) is an advanced and efficient form of propulsion that harnesses nuclear energy to generate thrust. The reactor powers an ion engine with electricity, producing an electromagnetic field that charges particles of inert gas and propels them forward in powerful jets for extraordinary bursts of speed !”
With this technology, the round trips between the Red Planet and Earth would take only 90 days, which would leave us plenty of time to go and save Matt Damon, if by chance he found himself alone on Mars. But it should be noted that this technology is still at the concept stage, and that it is not likely to equip our shuttles for many years, even decades...
Source: websites