A six - calendar month place journeying away , Mars often seems an almost impossible satellite to reach . But engineers are developing a new engine that could turn six months to six week , bringing the Red Planet much , much closer than ever before .
Using the traditional fuel - burning rockets that carry human beings on lunar foreign mission , it would take a manned spacecraft six months to travel from the Earth to Mars . While you could find volunteers in spades uncoerced to trade a class in a tin can for a glimpse of another major planet , osteoporosis - inducing weightlessness and unsafe radiation translate a protracted trip unfeasible . But attention has turned to ion engines . While a combustion rocket thrust a quad shuttle through the atmosphere , then lets it coast to its destination , ion engine are able to effect a more uninterrupted thrust :
Ion engines , on the other hand , accelerate electrically charged atoms , or ions , through an electric subject area , thereby pushing the spacecraft in the opposite direction . They allow much less thrust at a given moment than do chemical substance rockets , which means they ca n’t break in free of the Earth ’s gravity on their own .
But once in space , they can give a uninterrupted push for years , like a steady cinch at the back of a sailboat , accelerating gradually until they ’re moving faster than chemical rocket .
Engineers at theAd Astraare seeing hope in VASIMR , an ion locomotive engine that uses a wireless frequency source to heat charge particles and create greater driving force than other similar engines . advertising Astra design to attach a solar - power VASIMR engine to the International Space Station for tryout , and , if they are successful , could utilize VASIMR sporadically to squeeze the ISS back into the Earth ’s orbit .
But , if the engine were powered by an onboard nuclear reactor , its applications could be much more unplumbed . Using 1000 prison term the energy of a solar - powered VASIMR , a nuclear - power VASIMR engine could impel a manned ballistic capsule to Mars in a mere 39 day . Although the applied science to dally a nuclear nuclear reactor on a place shuttle is still a way off , many in astrophysics feel the undertaking hold enormous promise . NASA has furnish Ad Astra with a small stipend for VASIMR development , and NASA chief Charles Bolden had high kudos for the possibleness of shorten space travelling :
If engines , such as VASIMR , could be develop to take mass to the Red Planet in 40 days , “ that puts it inside the reach of what we finger comfortable of doing with humanity , ” he told New Scientist . “ Something like VASIMR – that ’s a secret plan record changer . ”
Ion engine could one day power 39 - day stumble to Mars[New Scientistvia Futurismic ]
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