Nasa journey to mars

Hammer time appears to be over.NASA's InSight lander, which is currently the rover in charge on the Red Planet, has hit its first snag.The lander has been snapping pics and exploring Mars since Nov. 26, 2018, and successfully set its heat probe onto the planet's dusty surface on Feb. 12.That probe, called the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Probe or HP3 for short, is designed to dig up to 16 feet (15 meters) below the surface and measure the heat coming from inside the planet. Also known as a "mole", the 16-inch-long (40-centimeter-long) probe started hammering itself into the soil on Feb. 28.But then it stopped. NASA rallied with a second bout of hammering on March 2, but it was of no use. The mole appears to be stumped. "Scientists suspect it hit a rock or some gravel," NASA said in a blog post Tuesday.The team are wondering what went wrong, after the mole proved adept at pushing small rocks aside or wending its way around them during testing prior to InSight's launch. Few rocks … [Read more...] about NASA’s InSight Mars lander got stuck between a rock in a hard place

If humans begin to travel to Mars in the next few decades, the one-way travel time of several months is going to make a long-haul international flight on Earth seem like a joyride.  Fortunately, one company is working to make it much easier to not just fall asleep on long interplanetary trips, but to hibernate through most of them. Atlanta-based SpaceWorks has received two rounds of funding from NASA to investigate the feasibility of making a staple of science fiction a standard for actual space exploration. NASA, which this week celebrated its 60th anniversary, plans to spend its next few decades taking us to the Red Planet. "Fourteen days is the point we have pretty high confidence that we can get to," said John Bradford, SpaceWorks president and former NASA engineer. That's two weeks straight with the body's core temperature lowered by around 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius). The point of going hypothermic like that is to induce a sleep state called torpor … [Read more...] about For that long, long trip to Mars, plan on a lot of hibernation

If humans begin to travel to Mars in the next few decades, the one-way travel time of several months is going to make a long-haul international flight on Earth seem like a joyride.  Fortunately, one company is working to make it much easier to not just fall asleep on long interplanetary trips, but to literally hibernate through most of them. Atlanta-based SpaceWorks has received two rounds of funding from NASA to investigate the feasibility of making a staple of science fiction a standard for actual space exploration. NASA, which this week celebrated its 60th anniversary, plans to spend its next few decades taking us to the Red Planet. "Fourteen days is the point we have pretty high confidence that we can get to," John Bradford, SpaceWorks president and former NASA engineer, told me over the phone. That's two weeks straight with the body's core temperature lowered by around 41 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius). The point of going hypothermic like this is to … [Read more...] about How a trip to Mars could be just a series of long naps

NASA has ventured every which way across the solar system, but a new change of direction closer to home could be its most audacious move since the moon landings. In the next decade, a typical mission could go something like this: NASA astronauts board a SpaceX Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) along with commercial astronauts and a few wealthy tourists. The rocket stops at the new space hotel circling the globe to drop off the visitors and the NASA astronauts spend a few hours there filming an advertisement and lending their endorsement to the privately owned "microgravity resort." From there, the commercial astronauts continue on to service the Lockheed-Martin lunar gateway, a space station in orbit around the moon that functions as a sort of truck stop for traffic between Earth and the moon. The NASA astronauts journey on to the lunar surface to continue building the agency's new outpost there, where both SpaceX and competitor Blue Origin already have permanent landing pads and the latter … [Read more...] about NASA turns 60, and it’s reinventing itself for the SpaceX era