Ion propulsion engine could take you to Mars and back in 39 days
Ready for some interplanetary exploration? We’ve had the force shields, currency, and refuel stations all sorted out for a while, and now here come the ion thrusters we’ve been missing to make manned trips to Mars really viable. Currently, a return journey to Mars can take up to two years, with crew members having to wait a full year for the planets to realign, but with ion propulsion — which uses electricity to accelerate ions and produce small but longevous thrust — ships can get there and back within a reasonably tight 39-day window. Ion propulsion rocket engines were first deployed successfully by NASA in the Deep Space 1 probe in 1998, and the latest iteration’s successful Earth-bound testing has led to plans for a flight to the moon and use on the International Space Station as test scenarios for the technology. It’s all still very much in the early stages, of course, but should all that testing, checking, and refinement bear fruit, we might finally have a whole new world to colonize and sell sneakers on.
[Thanks, Davis]
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Ion propulsion engine could take you to Mars and back in 39 days originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Posted: October 20th, 2009
at 11:31am by Vladislav Savov
Topics: Engine, InternationalSpaceStation, InterplanetaryTravel, IonPropulsion, Mars, Nasa, RocketEngine, Space, Space Travel, SpaceExploration, SpaceTravel, Transport, Travel, astronauts, exploration, international space station, interplanetary, interplanetary travel, ion propulsion, rocket, rocket engine, rockets, space exploration
NASA Moon Bombing Mission May Have Worked Out After All [Space]
So that anticlimactic moon bombing NASA attempted the other day may have kicked up a little dust after all.
Indeed, Earth and space-based telescopes couldn’t see it at the time, but there was, in fact, a dusty plume that got kicked up by the kamikaze LCROSS probe. Success!
That said, there’s still no word on whether or not water or aliens or cheese were present in the plume. Perhaps it was a combination of all three, and that’s the reason for NASA’s silence thus far (more seriously, NASA says results by “mid-November”).
Next time, just to be sure, I think NASA should shoot something a bit bigger into the Moon for better results. Something like, say, Richard Heene’s ego. [New Scientist]
An Asteroid Could Have Killed Us Tonight [Space]
Rejoice, because you are alive: An asteroid named 2009 TM8 just passed only 216,000 miles from Earth, racing at 18,163mph. That’s closer than the moon. But don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of opportunities to panic, says the JPL:
If it’s typical density, it would create a 4 kiloton explosion in the Earth’s atmosphere if it were to hit, which of course it won’t. You’d expect an object of this size to fly within the orbit of the moon every few days or so.
That’s what Don Yeomans—manager of the Near-Earth Object Program Office at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California—said talking about 2009 TM8 and the other 7 million objects in the near-Earth space which, “needless to say we have discovered only a small fraction of them.”
Great. At 30 feet, something like 2009 TM8 is not as big as the killer Apophis or as the superkiller that can destroy everything on Earth. But who cares about destroying everything when this thing is large enough to annihilate Brooklyn.
Ah well, as if I needed any excuses to celebrate after this sodding Friday. Zacapa rum, here I come. [MSNBC]
Pensioners Attacked by Space Junk and/or Aliens [Space]
What weights four pounds, is made of metal, and crashes through roofs at supersonic speeds? If you are an retired couple living in West Hull, Britain, the Royal Air Force says that’s a chunk of space junk.
Nobody knows from what satellite or spacecraft this exactly came from, but the RAF’s Defence Flying Complaints Investigation Team says that it definitely came from space. They say that its heavy mass indicates that it has been up in a decaying orbit for a decade or more.
Great. As if we didn’t have enough with all that space junk risking the life of astronauts up there. [Daily Mail]
Earth and Jupiter Captured In the Same Photograph Taken From Mars [Space]
This is a photo of the Earth and its moon and Jupiter and its moons. In the same frame. It’s taken from Mars, and it’s humbling and incredible. Be sure to click the picture to see its full scope. [Reddit]
