By Benjamin Vermette
Mars: Why We Need To Go There
In 1969, humanity set foot on the moon for the first time. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first two of 12 lucky and optimistic Apollo astronauts to walk on the moon.
The iconic image of Buzz Aldrin's visor reflecting Neil Armstrong during their milestone walk as the first humans on the moon.
Back then, the majority of NASA’s fans and even NASA officials thought we would set foot on Mars before the end of the century. However, we didn’t. Why? What was Apollo really about? Since 1972, no man has ventured further than Low Earth Orbit. Is it a sign of maturity? No. The United States made exploring the moon a priority because of the space race against the Russians during the Cold War. It was not a curious character that pushed NASA to send men to the moon — it was patriotic pride.
For now, no space race pushes NASA to send a man to Mars, so we’ll have to wait longer. The only people that can carry humanity further than Low Earth Orbit are ambitious explorers, like Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, the first private company to send liquid-fuel rockets into orbit and to resupply the International Space Station (ISS). He is hell-bent on sending a man to the Red Planet, and he is capable of great things: when SpaceX started in the business, it had more than a few sceptics. To be more realistic, everybody thought SpaceX would fail miserably. Today, as it turns out, the company has a contract with NASA to resupply the ISS, and launches their Falcon9 rocket. They are even trying to land the first-stage of the Falcon9 on a ship.
But why is Elon Musk so obsessed with going to Mars? In a conversation with Phil Plait, an American astronomer, he simply said, “Humans need to be a multi-planet species.” Behind this statement is perhaps the fear of staying on Earth; a single catastrophe could wipe humanity out. But Musk isn’t doing this for himself — we won’t have time to colonize Mars before he dies, unless he finds a way to live longer (then again, he is capable of many things) — he is doing this for his sons, and for the future of the human species. Maybe Musk was inspired by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the father of modern rocketry, who thought “the Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in the cradle forever.”
It may seem like science fiction to you, but for Elon Musk, it isn’t. The problem is not getting to Mars itself — it’s hard, but not impossible — it’s to convince the human that this goal is realistic and achievable.
Many people believe Musk will get to Mars. NASA, however, doesn’t think the same way. It believes nobody will get to Mars without its help, as it plans to visit the planet in the 2030s. “No commercial company without the support of NASA and government is going to get to Mars,” said Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator.
NASA’s New Horizons: Phase-2 Started For July Pluto Encounter
Launched in January 2006, New Horizons is now at Pluto’s doorstep. Actually, it’s so close to it that it took the first ever coloured image of Pluto and its giant moon Charon. It will be the first spacecraft ever to reach this mysterious dwarf-planet.
The unmanned space probe will perform Pluto’s closest approach in July 2015, and the scientists who make up New Horizons’ mission group are starting to get excited.
That excitement likely surged at the beginning of April, when the time to start Approach Phase 2 arrived. Phase 2 will last until June 23 — just before the anticipated encounter.
Approach Phase 2 consists of the spacecraft making use of four optical navigation campaigns, with the help of the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), and the Multi-spectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC).
Each of these systems will provide information about Pluto’s icy environment and help scientists find the best and safest path for New Horizons to take as it comes into contact with Pluto.
“We are going to be starting taking long exposure images of the whole region around Pluto, so that we can see if there are any new moons that might be producing any debris that could be dangerous to the spacecraft, or if we actually see rings of debris themselves orbiting Pluto in regions that might be dangerous to us,” explains John Spencer, a member of the mission’s science team.
A large community of scientists and amateur astronomers have been waiting patiently for almost a decade for New Horizons to provide astounding answers to some of Pluto’s mysteries, as the space probe carries out its final approach (traveling 1.2 million km each day).
Coloured Images Of Pluto And Ceres
As New Horizons approaches Pluto, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft entered Ceres’ orbit on March 6, 2015, becoming the first space probe to do so.
For a few weeks after having entered orbit, Dawn couldn’t take pictures of Ceres, because it was orbiting the far side (away from the sun) meaning the surface was too dark. It was only in the middle of April that Dawn sent the first coloured image of Ceres, orbiting between Mars and Jupiter.
Further away, 115 million km from Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons did the same and sent back the first colour photo of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, taken on April 9.
An illustration of NASA's New Horizons Spacecraft
NASA Will Capture An Asteroid Rock
On March 25, 2015, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced in more details its plan for the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM).
The ARM is necessary to test new capabilities and elements needed to take humans beyond Low Earth Orbit, including Mars. “ARM is an important part of the overall mission of taking humans further into space,” said Robert Lightfoot Jr., NASA associate administrator.
When the mission was first proposed in 2013, the plan was to move a small asteroid into a stable orbit around the moon. However, the plan has changed a little bit to attempt a mission that has increased applicability for future missions and has better potential for planetary protection techniques.
If all goes to plan, the ARM un-crewed spacecraft will launch in 2020 on a two-year journey to land on a pre-targeted asteroid. Once on the surface of the asteroid, it will capture a boulder up to 4 meters in diameter using its robotic arms.
It would then be placed in the asteroid’s orbit with the captive boulder in tow, during a period that may last up to a year. This technique will help NASA understand and develop techniques for moving an asteroid off a course towards the Earth, if the necessity should ever arise.
By 2025, the ARM spacecraft will, with the asteroid rock in its bag, place itself and the rock in an orbit around the moon. Next, a crew of two astronauts will fly in an Orion spacecraft on an approximately 25-day mission to rendezvous with the un-crewed ARM spacecraft and to collect samples of the boulder. “The option to retrieve a boulder from an asteroid will have a direct impact on planning for future human missions to deep space and begin a new era of spaceflight,” said Lightfoot Jr.
Russia & US To Build New Space Station After ISS
After the end of the International Space Station’s current operation, which is scheduled to culminate in 2024, NASA and the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) are planning to build a new space station.
“We have agreed that Roscosmos and NASA will be working together on the program of a future space station,” Roscosmos chief Igor Komarov said during a news conference. However, many rumours circulate in the space-o-sphere suggesting this may not be entirely true.
The discussions were held in Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on March 27, during the launch of the One-Year ISS Mission.
Not only would the Russians and Americans build a new station, but they would also co-operate on a joint Mars project. This is extremely ironic, as they fought in a space race during the Cold War less than 40 years ago.
“Our area of cooperation will be Mars,” said Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator. “We are discussing how best to use the resources, the finance, we are setting time frames and distributing efforts in order to avoid duplication.”
Again, this is not confirmed. However, how fun would it be to see two opposing nations co-operate in a sector they’ve always fought over?