Discovery and exploration of outer space

Space exploration is the use of astronomy and space technology to explore outer space.[1] While the exploration of space is carried out mainly by astronomers with telescopes, its physical exploration though is conducted both by unmanned robotic space probes and human spaceflight. Space exploration, like its classical form astronomy, is one of the main sources for space science.

While the observation of objects in space, known as astronomy, predates reliable recorded history, it was the development of large and relatively efficient rockets during the mid-twentieth century that allowed physical space exploration to become a reality. Common rationales for exploring space include advancing scientific research, national prestige, uniting different nations, ensuring the future survival of humanity, and developing military and strategic advantages against other countries.[2]

The early era of space exploration was driven by a "Space Race" between the Soviet Union and the United States. The launch of the first human-made object to orbit Earth, the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1, on 4 October 1957, and the first Moon landing by the American Apollo 11 mission on 20 July 1969 are often taken as landmarks for this initial period. The Soviet space program achieved many of the first milestones, including the first living being in orbit in 1957, the first human spaceflight (Yuri Gagarin aboard Vostok 1) in 1961, the first spacewalk (by Alexei Leonov) on 18 March 1965, the first automatic landing on another celestial body in 1966, and the launch of the first space station (Salyut 1) in 1971. After the first 20 years of exploration, focus shifted from one-off flights to renewable hardware, such as the Space Shuttle program, and from competition to cooperation as with the International Space Station (ISS).

With the substantial completion of the ISS[3] following STS-133 in March 2011, plans for space exploration by the U.S. remain in flux. Constellation, a Bush Administration program for a return to the Moon by 2020[4] was judged inadequately funded and unrealistic by an expert review panel reporting in 2009.[5] The Obama Administration proposed a revision of Constellation in 2010 to focus on the development of the capability for crewed missions beyond low Earth orbit (LEO), envisioning extending the operation of the ISS beyond 2020, transferring the development of launch vehicles for human crews from NASA to the private sector, and developing technology to enable missions to beyond LEO, such as EarthMoon L1, the Moon, EarthSun L2, near-Earth asteroids, and Phobos or Mars orbit.[6]

In the 2000s, China initiated a successful manned spaceflight program, while the European Union, Japan, and India have also planned future crewed space missions. China, Russia, Japan, and India have advocated crewed missions to the Moon during the 21st century, while the European Union has advocated manned missions to both the Moon and Mars during the 20th and 21st century.

From the 1990s onwards, private interests began promoting space tourism and then public space exploration of the Moon (see Google Lunar X Prize). Students interested in Space have formed SEDS (Students for the Exploration and Development of Space). SpaceX is currently developing Starship, a fully reusable orbital launch vehicle that is expected to massively reduce the cost of spaceflight and allow for crewed planetary exploration.[7][8]

The first telescope was said to be invented in 1608 in the Netherlands by an eyeglass maker named Hans Lippershey. The Orbiting Astronomical Observatory 2 was the first space telescope launched on December 7, 1968.[9] As of February 2, 2019, there was 3,891 confirmed exoplanets discovered. The Milky Way is estimated to contain 100400 billion stars[10] and more than 100 billion planets.[11] There are at least 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe.[12][13] GN-z11 is the most distant known object from Earth, reported as 32 billion light-years away.[14][15]

In 1949, the Bumper-WAC reached an altitude of 393 kilometres (244mi), becoming the first human-made object to enter space, according to NASA,[16] although V-2 Rocket MW 18014 crossed the Krmn line earlier, in 1944.[17]

The first successful orbital launch was of the Soviet uncrewed Sputnik 1 ("Satellite 1") mission on 4 October 1957. The satellite weighed about 83kg (183lb), and is believed to have orbited Earth at a height of about 250km (160mi). It had two radio transmitters (20 and 40MHz), which emitted "beeps" that could be heard by radios around the globe. Analysis of the radio signals was used to gather information about the electron density of the ionosphere, while temperature and pressure data was encoded in the duration of radio beeps. The results indicated that the satellite was not punctured by a meteoroid. Sputnik 1 was launched by an R-7 rocket. It burned up upon re-entry on 3 January 1958.

The first successful human spaceflight was Vostok 1 ("East 1"), carrying 27-year-old Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on 12 April 1961. The spacecraft completed one orbit around the globe, lasting about 1 hour and 48 minutes. Gagarin's flight resonated around the world; it was a demonstration of the advanced Soviet space program and it opened an entirely new era in space exploration: human spaceflight.

The first artificial object to reach another celestial body was Luna 2 reaching the Moon in 1959.[18] The first soft landing on another celestial body was performed by Luna 9 landing on the Moon on February 3, 1966.[19] Luna 10 became the first artificial satellite of the Moon, entering in a lunar orbit on April 3, 1966.[20]

The first crewed landing on another celestial body was performed by Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969, landing on the Moon. There have been a total of six spacecraft with humans landing on the Moon starting from 1969 to the last human landing in 1972.

The first interplanetary flyby was the 1961 Venera 1 flyby of Venus, though the 1962 Mariner 2 was the first flyby of Venus to return data (closest approach 34,773 kilometers). Pioneer 6 was the first satellite to orbit the Sun, launched on December 16, 1965. The other planets were first flown by in 1965 for Mars by Mariner 4, 1973 for Jupiter by Pioneer 10, 1974 for Mercury by Mariner 10, 1979 for Saturn by Pioneer 11, 1986 for Uranus by Voyager 2, 1989 for Neptune by Voyager 2. In 2015, the dwarf planets Ceres and Pluto were orbited by Dawn and passed by New Horizons, respectively. This accounts for flybys of each of the eight planets in the Solar System, the Sun, the Moon and Ceres & Pluto (2 of the 5 recognized dwarf planets).

The first interplanetary surface mission to return at least limited surface data from another planet was the 1970 landing of Venera 7, which returned data to Earth for 23 minutes from Venus. In 1975 the Venera 9 was the first to return images from the surface of another planet, returning images from Venus. In 1971 the Mars 3 mission achieved the first soft landing on Mars returning data for almost 20 seconds. Later much longer duration surface missions were achieved, including over six years of Mars surface operation by Viking 1 from 1975 to 1982 and over two hours of transmission from the surface of Venus by Venera 13 in 1982, the longest ever Soviet planetary surface mission. Venus and Mars are the two planets outside of Earth, humans have conducted surface missions on with unmanned robotic spacecraft.

Salyut 1 was the first space station of any kind, launched into low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on April 19, 1971. The International Space Station is currently the only fully functional space station, with continuous inhabitance since the year 2000.

Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to leave the Solar System into interstellar space on August 25, 2012. The probe passed the heliopause at 121 AU to enter interstellar space.[21]

The Apollo 13 flight passed the far side of the Moon at an altitude of 254 kilometers (158 miles; 137 nautical miles) above the lunar surface, and 400,171km (248,655mi) from Earth, marking the record for the farthest humans have ever traveled from Earth in 1970.

Voyager 1 is currently at a distance of 145.11 astronomical units (2.17081010km; 1.34891010mi) (21.708 billion kilometers; 13.489 billion miles) from Earth as of January 1, 2019.[22] It is the most distant human-made object from Earth.[23]

GN-z11 is the most distant known object from Earth, reported as 13.4 billion light-years away.[14][15]

The dream of stepping into the outer reaches of Earth's atmosphere was driven by the fiction of Jules Verne[24][25][26] and H. G. Wells,[27] and rocket technology was developed to try to realize this vision. The German V-2 was the first rocket to travel into space, overcoming the problems of thrust and material failure. During the final days of World War II this technology was obtained by both the Americans and Soviets as were its designers. The initial driving force for further development of the technology was a weapons race for intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) to be used as long-range carriers for fast nuclear weapon delivery, but in 1961 when the Soviet Union launched the first man into space, the United States declared itself to be in a "Space Race" with the Soviets.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert Goddard, Hermann Oberth, and Reinhold Tiling laid the groundwork of rocketry in the early years of the 20th century.

Wernher von Braun was the lead rocket engineer for Nazi Germany's World War II V-2 rocket project. In the last days of the war he led a caravan of workers in the German rocket program to the American lines, where they surrendered and were brought to the United States to work on their rocket development ("Operation Paperclip"). He acquired American citizenship and led the team that developed and launched Explorer 1, the first American satellite. Von Braun later led the team at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center which developed the Saturn V moon rocket.

Initially the race for space was often led by Sergei Korolev, whose legacy includes both the R7 and Soyuzwhich remain in service to this day. Korolev was the mastermind behind the first satellite, first man (and first woman) in orbit and first spacewalk. Until his death his identity was a closely guarded state secret; not even his mother knew that he was responsible for creating the Soviet space program.

Kerim Kerimov was one of the founders of the Soviet space program and was one of the lead architects behind the first human spaceflight (Vostok 1) alongside Sergey Korolev. After Korolev's death in 1966, Kerimov became the lead scientist of the Soviet space program and was responsible for the launch of the first space stations from 1971 to 1991, including the Salyut and Mir series, and their precursors in 1967, the Cosmos 186 and Cosmos 188.[28][29]

Other key people:

Starting in the mid-20th century probes and then human mission were sent into Earth orbit, and then on to the Moon. Also, probes were sent throughout the known Solar system, and into Solar orbit. Unmanned spacecraft have been sent into orbit around Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury by the 21st century, and the most distance active spacecraft, Voyager 1 and 2 traveled beyond 100 times the Earth-Sun distance. The instruments were enough though that it is thought they have left the Sun's heliosphere, a sort of bubble of particles made in the Galaxy by the Sun's solar wind.

The Sun is a major focus of space exploration. Being above the atmosphere in particular and Earth's magnetic field gives access to the solar wind and infrared and ultraviolet radiations that cannot reach Earth's surface. The Sun generates most space weather, which can affect power generation and transmission systems on Earth and interfere with, and even damage, satellites and space probes. Numerous spacecraft dedicated to observing the Sun, beginning with the Apollo Telescope Mount, have been launched and still others have had solar observation as a secondary objective. Parker Solar Probe, launched in 2018, will approach the Sun to within 1/8th the orbit of Mercury.

Mercury remains the least explored of the Terrestrial planets. As of May 2013, the Mariner 10 and MESSENGER missions have been the only missions that have made close observations of Mercury. MESSENGER entered orbit around Mercury in March 2011, to further investigate the observations made by Mariner 10 in 1975 (Munsell, 2006b).

A third mission to Mercury, scheduled to arrive in 2025, BepiColombo is to include two probes. BepiColombo is a joint mission between Japan and the European Space Agency. MESSENGER and BepiColombo are intended to gather complementary data to help scientists understand many of the mysteries discovered by Mariner 10's flybys.

Flights to other planets within the Solar System are accomplished at a cost in energy, which is described by the net change in velocity of the spacecraft, or delta-v. Due to the relatively high delta-v to reach Mercury and its proximity to the Sun, it is difficult to explore and orbits around it are rather unstable.

Venus was the first target of interplanetary flyby and lander missions and, despite one of the most hostile surface environments in the Solar System, has had more landers sent to it (nearly all from the Soviet Union) than any other planet in the Solar System. The first flyby was the 1961Venera 1, though the 1962Mariner 2was the first flybyto successfully return data. Mariner 2 has been followed by several other flybys by multiple space agencies often as part of missions using a Venus flyby to provide a gravitational assist en route to other celestial bodies. In 1967 Venera 4 became the first probe to enter and directly examine the atmosphere of Venus. In 1970, Venera 7 became the first successful lander to reach the surface of Venus and by 1985 it had been followed by eight additional successful Soviet Venus landers which provided images and other direct surface data. Starting in 1975 with the Soviet orbiter Venera 9 some ten successful orbiter missions have been sent to Venus, including later missions which were able to map the surface of Venus using radar to pierce the obscuring atmosphere.

Space exploration has been used as a tool to understand Earth as a celestial object in its own right. Orbital missions can provide data for Earth that can be difficult or impossible to obtain from a purely ground-based point of reference.

For example, the existence of the Van Allen radiation belts was unknown until their discovery by the United States' first artificial satellite, Explorer 1. These belts contain radiation trapped by Earth's magnetic fields, which currently renders construction of habitable space stations above 1000km impractical.Following this early unexpected discovery, a large number of Earth observation satellites have been deployed specifically to explore Earth from a space based perspective. These satellites have significantly contributed to the understanding of a variety of Earth-based phenomena. For instance, the hole in the ozone layer was found by an artificial satellite that was exploring Earth's atmosphere, and satellites have allowed for the discovery of archeological sites or geological formations that were difficult or impossible to otherwise identify.

The Moon was the first celestial body to be the object of space exploration. It holds the distinctions of being the first remote celestial object to be flown by, orbited, and landed upon by spacecraft, and the only remote celestial object ever to be visited by humans.

In 1959 the Soviets obtained the first images of the far side of the Moon, never previously visible to humans. The U.S. exploration of the Moon began with the Ranger 4 impactor in 1962. Starting in 1966 the Soviets successfully deployed a number of landers to the Moon which were able to obtain data directly from the Moon's surface; just four months later, Surveyor 1 marked the debut of a successful series of U.S. landers. The Soviet uncrewed missions culminated in the Lunokhod program in the early 1970s, which included the first uncrewed rovers and also successfully brought lunar soil samples to Earth for study. This marked the first (and to date the only) automated return of extraterrestrial soil samples to Earth. Uncrewed exploration of the Moon continues with various nations periodically deploying lunar orbiters, and in 2008 the Indian Moon Impact Probe.

Crewed exploration of the Moon began in 1968 with the Apollo 8 mission that successfully orbited the Moon, the first time any extraterrestrial object was orbited by humans. In 1969, the Apollo 11 mission marked the first time humans set foot upon another world. Crewed exploration of the Moon did not continue for long, however. The Apollo 17 mission in 1972 marked the sixth landing and the most recent human visit there. Artemis 2 will flyby the Moon in 2022. Robotic missions are still pursued vigorously.

The exploration of Mars has been an important part of the space exploration programs of the Soviet Union (later Russia), the United States, Europe, Japan and India. Dozens of robotic spacecraft, including orbiters, landers, and rovers, have been launched toward Mars since the 1960s. These missions were aimed at gathering data about current conditions and answering questions about the history of Mars. The questions raised by the scientific community are expected to not only give a better appreciation of the red planet but also yield further insight into the past, and possible future, of Earth.

The exploration of Mars has come at a considerable financial cost with roughly two-thirds of all spacecraft destined for Mars failing before completing their missions, with some failing before they even began. Such a high failure rate can be attributed to the complexity and large number of variables involved in an interplanetary journey, and has led researchers to jokingly speak of The Great Galactic Ghoul[30] which subsists on a diet of Mars probes. This phenomenon is also informally known as the "Mars Curse".[31]In contrast to overall high failure rates in the exploration of Mars, India has become the first country to achieve success of its maiden attempt. India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM)[32][33][34] is one of the least expensive interplanetary missions ever undertaken with an approximate total cost of 450 Crore (US$73 million).[35][36] The first mission to Mars by any Arab country has been taken up by the United Arab Emirates. Called the Emirates Mars Mission, it is scheduled for launch in 2020. The uncrewed exploratory probe has been named "Hope Probe" and will be sent to Mars to study its atmosphere in detail.[37]

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk hopes that the SpaceX Starship will explore the Mars.

The Russian space mission Fobos-Grunt, which launched on 9 November 2011 experienced a failure leaving it stranded in low Earth orbit.[38] It was to begin exploration of the Phobos and Martian circumterrestrial orbit, and study whether the moons of Mars, or at least Phobos, could be a "trans-shipment point" for spaceships traveling to Mars.[39]

Until the advent of space travel, objects in the asteroid belt were merely pinpricks of light in even the largest telescopes, their shapes and terrain remaining a mystery.Several asteroids have now been visited by probes, the first of which was Galileo, which flew past two: 951 Gaspra in 1991, followed by 243 Ida in 1993. Both of these lay near enough to Galileo's planned trajectory to Jupiter that they could be visited at acceptable cost. The first landing on an asteroid was performed by the NEAR Shoemaker probe in 2000, following an orbital survey of the object. The dwarf planet Ceres and the asteroid 4 Vesta, two of the three largest asteroids, were visited by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, launched in 2007.

Hayabusa was a robotic spacecraft developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to return a sample of material from the small near-Earth asteroid 25143 Itokawa to Earth for further analysis. Hayabusa was launched on 9 May 2003 and rendezvoused with Itokawa in mid-September 2005. After arriving at Itokawa, Hayabusa studied the asteroid's shape, spin, topography, color, composition, density, and history. In November 2005, it landed on the asteroid twice to collect samples. The spacecraft returned to Earth on 13 June 2010.

The exploration of Jupiter has consisted solely of a number of automated NASA spacecraft visiting the planet since 1973. A large majority of the missions have been "flybys", in which detailed observations are taken without the probe landing or entering orbit; such as in Pioneer and Voyager programs. The Galileo and Juno spacecraft are the only spacecraft to have entered the planet's orbit. As Jupiter is believed to have only a relatively small rocky core and no real solid surface, a landing mission is precluded.

Reaching Jupiter from Earth requires a delta-v of 9.2km/s,[40] which is comparable to the 9.7km/s delta-v needed to reach low Earth orbit.[41] Fortunately, gravity assists through planetary flybys can be used to reduce the energy required at launch to reach Jupiter, albeit at the cost of a significantly longer flight duration.[40]

Jupiter has 79 known moons, many of which have relatively little known information about them.

Saturn has been explored only through uncrewed spacecraft launched by NASA, including one mission (CassiniHuygens) planned and executed in cooperation with other space agencies. These missions consist of flybys in 1979 by Pioneer 11, in 1980 by Voyager 1, in 1982 by Voyager 2 and an orbital mission by the Cassini spacecraft, which lasted from 2004 until 2017.

Saturn has at least 62 known moons, although the exact number is debatable since Saturn's rings are made up of vast numbers of independently orbiting objects of varying sizes. The largest of the moons is Titan, which holds the distinction of being the only moon in the Solar System with an atmosphere denser and thicker than that of Earth. Titan holds the distinction of being the only object in the Outer Solar System that has been explored with a lander, the Huygens probe deployed by the Cassini spacecraft.

The exploration of Uranus has been entirely through the Voyager 2 spacecraft, with no other visits currently planned. Given its axial tilt of 97.77, with its polar regions exposed to sunlight or darkness for long periods, scientists were not sure what to expect at Uranus. The closest approach to Uranus occurred on 24 January 1986. Voyager 2 studied the planet's unique atmosphere and magnetosphere. Voyager 2 also examined its ring system and the moons of Uranus including all five of the previously known moons, while discovering an additional ten previously unknown moons.

Images of Uranus proved to have a very uniform appearance, with no evidence of the dramatic storms or atmospheric banding evident on Jupiter and Saturn. Great effort was required to even identify a few clouds in the images of the planet. The magnetosphere of Uranus, however, proved to be unique, being profoundly affected by the planet's unusual axial tilt. In contrast to the bland appearance of Uranus itself, striking images were obtained of the Moons of Uranus, including evidence that Miranda had been unusually geologically active.

The exploration of Neptune began with the 25 August 1989 Voyager 2 flyby, the sole visit to the system as of 2014. The possibility of a Neptune Orbiter has been discussed, but no other missions have been given serious thought.

Although the extremely uniform appearance of Uranus during Voyager 2's visit in 1986 had led to expectations that Neptune would also have few visible atmospheric phenomena, the spacecraft found that Neptune had obvious banding, visible clouds, auroras, and even a conspicuous anticyclone storm system rivaled in size only by Jupiter's small Spot. Neptune also proved to have the fastest winds of any planet in the Solar System, measured as high as 2,100km/h.[42] Voyager 2 also examined Neptune's ring and moon system. It discovered 900 complete rings and additional partial ring "arcs" around Neptune. In addition to examining Neptune's three previously known moons, Voyager 2 also discovered five previously unknown moons, one of which, Proteus, proved to be the last largest moon in the system. Data from Voyager 2 supported the view that Neptune's largest moon, Triton, is a captured Kuiper belt object.[43]

The dwarf planet Pluto presents significant challenges for spacecraft because of its great distance from Earth (requiring high velocity for reasonable trip times) and small mass (making capture into orbit very difficult at present). Voyager 1 could have visited Pluto, but controllers opted instead for a close flyby of Saturn's moon Titan, resulting in a trajectory incompatible with a Pluto flyby. Voyager 2 never had a plausible trajectory for reaching Pluto.[44]

After an intense political battle, a mission to Pluto dubbed New Horizons was granted funding from the United States government in 2003.[45] New Horizons was launched successfully on 19 January 2006. In early 2007 the craft made use of a gravity assist from Jupiter. Its closest approach to Pluto was on 14 July 2015; scientific observations of Pluto began five months prior to closest approach and continued for 16 days after the encounter.

The New Horizons mission did a flyby of the small planetesimal Arrokoth in 2019.

Although many comets have been studied from Earth sometimes with centuries-worth of observations, only a few comets have been closely visited. In 1985, the International Cometary Explorer conducted the first comet fly-by (21P/Giacobini-Zinner) before joining the Halley Armada studying the famous comet. The Deep Impact probe smashed into 9P/Tempel to learn more about its structure and composition and the Stardust mission returned samples of another comet's tail. The Philae lander successfully landed on Comet ChuryumovGerasimenko in 2014 as part of the broader Rosetta mission.

Deep space exploration is the branch of astronomy, astronautics and space technology that is involved with the exploration of distant regions of outer space.[46] Physical exploration of space is conducted both by human spaceflights (deep-space astronautics) and by robotic spacecraft.

Some of the best candidates for future deep space engine technologies include anti-matter, nuclear power and beamed propulsion.[47] The latter, beamed propulsion, appears to be the best candidate for deep space exploration presently available, since it uses known physics and known technology that is being developed for other purposes.[48]

Young Space enthusiasts and professionals are involved in SEDS, Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, which is in many countries on Earth.

Breakthrough Starshot is a research and engineering project by the Breakthrough Initiatives to develop a proof-of-concept fleet of light sail spacecraft named StarChip,[49] to be capable of making the journey to the Alpha Centauri star system 4.37 light-years away. It was founded in 2016 by Yuri Milner, Stephen Hawking, and Mark Zuckerberg.[50][51]

An article in science magazine Nature suggested the use of asteroids as a gateway for space exploration, with the ultimate destination being Mars. In order to make such an approach viable, three requirements need to be fulfilled: first, "a thorough asteroid survey to find thousands of nearby bodies suitable for astronauts to visit"; second, "extending flight duration and distance capability to ever-increasing ranges out to Mars"; and finally, "developing better robotic vehicles and tools to enable astronauts to explore an asteroid regardless of its size, shape or spin." Furthermore, using asteroids would provide astronauts with protection from galactic cosmic rays, with mission crews being able to land on them without great risk to radiation exposure.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or "Webb") is a space telescope that is planned to be the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.[52][53] The JWST will provide greatly improved resolution and sensitivity over the Hubble, and will enable a broad range of investigations across the fields of astronomy and cosmology, including observing some of the most distant events and objects in the universe, such as the formation of the first galaxies. Other goals include understanding the formation of stars and planets, and direct imaging of exoplanets and novas.[54]

The primary mirror of the JWST, the Optical Telescope Element, is composed of 18 hexagonal mirror segments made of gold-plated beryllium which combine to create a 6.5-meter (21ft; 260in) diameter mirror that is much larger than the Hubble's 2.4-meter (7.9ft; 94in) mirror. Unlike the Hubble, which observes in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared (0.1 to 1 m) spectra, the JWST will observe in a lower frequency range, from long-wavelength visible light through mid-infrared (0.6 to 27 m), which will allow it to observe high redshift objects that are too old and too distant for the Hubble to observe.[55] The telescope must be kept very cold in order to observe in the infrared without interference, so it will be deployed in space near the EarthSun L2 Lagrangian point, and a large sunshield made of silicon- and aluminum-coated Kapton will keep its mirror and instruments below 50K (220C; 370F).[56]

The Artemis program is an ongoing crewed spaceflight program carried out by NASA, U.S. commercial spaceflight companies, and international partners such as ESA,[57] with the goal of landing "the first woman and the next man" on the Moon, specifically at the lunar south pole region by 2024. Artemis would be the next step towards the long-term goal of establishing a sustainable presence on the Moon, laying the foundation for private companies to build a lunar economy, and eventually sending humans to Mars.

In 2017, the lunar campaign was authorized by Space Policy Directive 1, utilizing various ongoing spacecraft programs such as Orion, the Lunar Gateway, Commercial Lunar Payload Services, and adding an undeveloped crewed lander. The Space Launch System will serve as the primary launch vehicle for Orion, while commercial launch vehicles are planned for use to launch various other elements of the campaign.[58] NASA requested $1.6 billion in additional funding for Artemis for fiscal year 2020,[59] while the Senate Appropriations Committee requested from NASA a five-year budget profile[60] which is needed for evaluation and approval by Congress.[61][62]

The research that is conducted by national space exploration agencies, such as NASA and Roscosmos, is one of the reasons supporters cite to justify government expenses. Economic analyses of the NASA programs often showed ongoing economic benefits (such as NASA spin-offs), generating many times the revenue of the cost of the program.[63] It is also argued that space exploration would lead to the extraction of resources on other planets and especially asteroids, which contain billions of dollars that worth of minerals and metals. Such expeditions could generate a lot of revenue.[64] In addition, it has been argued that space exploration programs help inspire youth to study in science and engineering.[65] Space exploration also gives scientists the ability to perform experiments in other settings and expand humanity's knowledge.[66]

Another claim is that space exploration is a necessity to mankind and that staying on Earth will lead to extinction. Some of the reasons are lack of natural resources, comets, nuclear war, and worldwide epidemic. Stephen Hawking, renowned British theoretical physicist, said that "I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars."[67] Arthur C. Clarke (1950) presented a summary of motivations for the human exploration of space in his non-fiction semi-technical monograph Interplanetary Flight.[68] He argued that humanity's choice is essentially between expansion off Earth into space, versus cultural (and eventually biological) stagnation and death.

NASA has produced a series of public service announcement videos supporting the concept of space exploration.[69]

Overall, the public remains largely supportive of both crewed and uncrewed space exploration. According to an Associated Press Poll conducted in July 2003, 71% of U.S. citizens agreed with the statement that the space program is "a good investment", compared to 21% who did not.[70]

Spaceflight is the use of space technology to achieve the flight of spacecraft into and through outer space.

Spaceflight is used in space exploration, and also in commercial activities like space tourism and satellite telecommunications. Additional non-commercial uses of spaceflight include space observatories, reconnaissance satellites and other Earth observation satellites.

A spaceflight typically begins with a rocket launch, which provides the initial thrust to overcome the force of gravity and propels the spacecraft from the surface of Earth. Once in space, the motion of a spacecraftboth when unpropelled and when under propulsionis covered by the area of study called astrodynamics. Some spacecraft remain in space indefinitely, some disintegrate during atmospheric reentry, and others reach a planetary or lunar surface for landing or impact.

Satellites are used for a large number of purposes. Common types include military (spy) and civilian Earth observation satellites, communication satellites, navigation satellites, weather satellites, and research satellites. Space stations and human spacecraft in orbit are also satellites.

Current examples of the commercial use of space include satellite navigation systems, satellite television and satellite radio. Space tourism is the recent phenomenon of space travel by individuals for the purpose of personal pleasure.

Private spaceflight companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin, and commercial space stations such as the Axiom Space and the Bigelow Commercial Space Station have dramatically changed the landscape of space exploration, and will continue to do so in the near future.

Astrobiology is the interdisciplinary study of life in the universe, combining aspects of astronomy, biology and geology.[71] It is focused primarily on the study of the origin, distribution and evolution of life. It is also known as exobiology (from Greek: , exo, "outside").[72][73][74] The term "Xenobiology" has been used as well, but this is technically incorrect because its terminology means "biology of the foreigners".[75] Astrobiologists must also consider the possibility of life that is chemically entirely distinct from any life found on Earth.[76] In the Solar System some of the prime locations for current or past astrobiology are on Enceladus, Europa, Mars, and Titan.

To date, the longest human occupation of space is the International Space Station which has been in continuous use for 19years, 365days. Valeri Polyakov's record single spaceflight of almost 438 days aboard the Mir space station has not been surpassed. The health effects of space have been well documented through years of research conducted in the field of aerospace medicine. Analog environments similar to those one may experience in space travel (like deep sea submarines) have been used in this research to further explore the relationship between isolation and extreme environments.[78] It is imperative that the health of the crew be maintained as any deviation from baseline may compromise the integrity of the mission as well as the safety of the crew, hence the reason why astronauts must endure rigorous medical screenings and tests prior to embarking on any missions. However, it does not take long for the environmental dynamics of spaceflight to commence its toll on the human body; for example, space motion sickness (SMS) - a condition which affects the neurovestibular system and culminates in mild to severe signs and symptoms such as vertigo, dizziness, fatigue, nausea, and disorientation - plagues almost all space travelers within their first few days in orbit.[78] Space travel can also have a profound impact on the psyche of the crew members as delineated in anecdotal writings composed after their retirement. Space travel can adversely affect the body's natural biological clock (circadian rhythm); sleep patterns causing sleep deprivation and fatigue; and social interaction; consequently, residing in a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) environment for a prolonged amount of time can result in both mental and physical exhaustion.[78] Long-term stays in space reveal issues with bone and muscle loss in low gravity, immune system suppression, and radiation exposure. The lack of gravity causes fluid to rise upward which can cause pressure to build up in the eye, resulting in vision problems; the loss of bone minerals and densities; cardiovascular deconditioning; and decreased endurance and muscle mass.[79]

Radiation is perhaps the most insidious health hazard to space travelers as it is invisible to the naked eye and can cause cancer. Space craft are no longer protected from the sun's radiation as they are positioned above the Earth's magnetic field; the danger of radiation is even more potent when one enters deep space. The hazards of radiation can be ameliorated through protective shielding on the spacecraft, alerts, and dosimetry.[80]

Fortunately, with new and rapidly evolving technological advancements, those in Mission Control are able to monitor the health of their astronauts more closely utilizing telemedicine. One may not be able to completely evade the physiological effects of space flight, but they can be mitigated. For example, medical systems aboard space vessels such as the International Space Station (ISS) are well equipped and designed to counteract the effects of lack of gravity and weightlessness; on-board treadmills can help prevent muscle loss and reduce the risk of developing premature osteoporosis.[78][80] Additionally, a crew medical officer is appointed for each ISS mission and a flight surgeon is available 24/7 via the ISS Mission Control Center located in Houston, Texas. [81]Although the interactions are intended to take place in real time, communications between the space and terrestrial crew may become delayed - sometimes by as much as 20 minutes[80] - as their distance from each other increases when the spacecraft moves further out of LEO; because of this the crew are trained and need to be prepared to respond to any medical emergencies that may arise on the vessel as the ground crew are hundreds of miles away. As one can see, travelling and possibly living in space poses many challenges. Many past and current concepts for the continued exploration and colonization of space focus on a return to the Moon as a "stepping stone" to the other planets, especially Mars. At the end of 2006 NASA announced they were planning to build a permanent Moon base with continual presence by 2024.[82]

Beyond the technical factors that could make living in space more widespread, it has been suggested that the lack of private property, the inability or difficulty in establishing property rights in space, has been an impediment to the development of space for human habitation. Since the advent of space technology in the latter half of the twentieth century, the ownership of property in space has been murky, with strong arguments both for and against. In particular, the making of national territorial claims in outer space and on celestial bodies has been specifically proscribed by the Outer Space Treaty, which had been, as of 2012[update], ratified by all spacefaring nations.[83]Space colonization, also called space settlement and space humanization, would be the permanent autonomous (self-sufficient) human habitation of locations outside Earth, especially of natural satellites or planets such as the Moon or Mars, using significant amounts of in-situ resource utilization.

The first woman to ever enter space was Valentina Tereshkova. She flew in 1963 but it was not until the 1980s that another woman entered space again. All astronauts were required to be military test pilots at the time and women were not able to enter this career, this is one reason for the delay in allowing women to join space crews.[citation needed] After the rule changed, Svetlana Savitskaya became the second woman to enter space, she was also from the Soviet Union. Sally Ride became the next woman to enter space and the first woman to enter space through the United States program.

Since then, eleven other countries have allowed women astronauts. Due to some slow changes in the space programs to allow women.The first all female space walk occurred in 2018, including Christina Koch and Jessica Meir. These two women have both participated in separate space walks with NASA. The first woman to go to the moon is planned for 2024.

Despite these developments women are still underrepresented among astronauts and especially cosmonauts. Issues that block potential applicants from the programs and limit the space missions they are able to go on, are for example:

Additionally women have been discriminately treated for example as with Sally Ride by being scrutinized more than her male counterparts and asked sexist questions by the press.

Artistry in and from space ranges from signals, capturing and arranging material like Yuri Gagarin's selfie in space or the image The Blue Marble, over drawings like the first one in space by cosmonaut and artist Alexei Leonov, music videos like Chris Hadfield's cover of Space Oddity onboard the ISS, to permanent installations on celestial bodies like on the Moon.

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Space exploration - Wikipedia

It's no shocker when several people loudly threaten to leave the country if an election doesn't go their way. Yet it's hard to go anywhere this year, with a pandemic locking most people in place. Will the time come when we hear promises to bolt the planet?

"Will the election make some people want to leave the planet? Probably. I've already seen some friends on Facebook say so," said Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and author of the new short book America's New Destiny in Space.

According to Reynolds, it won't be too long before people can make good on that threat. Because of the work of SpaceX and other private space exploration companies, the price per kilogram (or per pound) of getting people and materials into space is plummeting like a meteor in the earth's atmosphere.

Previously, it cost about $55,000 to get a single kilogram into orbit. Now, the price has fallen to about $2,700. It is projected to fall further with the next generation of rockets, going down to $270 or lower. As the price falls, many more things become financially possible.

Reynolds's book claims that not only will space travel and habitation become more affordable, it will also be sustainable, meaning the economic activity outside the earth's atmosphere will eventually pay for the ride and the construction of new environments to support humans.

Sean Higgins is a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute with academic training in history. He has some doubts.

"I believe [living in space] will only happen if there is a way to harvest resources like, for example, energy or minerals. Historically, the driving force behind most colonization was the search for resources: Find a place that had something of value, and stake a claim to it, then have people relocate to that place to ensure that the claim holds," Higgins told the Washington Examiner.

"The problem with space is that it is, by definition, empty. It's right there in the word 'space.' So there's not much there to exploit, which is a problem because living in space is itself resource-intensive. Colonizing another planet is theoretically possible, but again, it would have to have a lot of resources to justify the effort," he added.

The extraplanetary economic opportunity that is most often touted is asteroid mining. Some asteroids are known to have deposits of ores and minerals that would make them incredibly valuable, in the trillions of dollars, at current market rates.

Yet Reynolds points out some economic hiccups with harvesting asteroids. It would cost a lot of money to get the equipment there to do that. The resources would still have to be brought back through Earth's punishing atmosphere. And even if the resources could be brought here in large quantities, their value would drop sharply because scarcity is keeping the prices up.

Tim Schumann is an occasional technology investor in the Seattle area. He thinks asteroid mining will not be an incredible gold rush but that it could create new opportunities. "It opens up possibilities to do new and interesting things with metals that used to be prohibitively expensive," he told the Washington Examiner.

Energy is another story. Earth's atmosphere filters out much solar radiation and other cosmic interference. That encourages life here. It also means that solar panels capture far less energy on this planet than they could, unobstructed, up in space. The capture in space and transmission to Earth of large amounts of energy could significantly reduce humanity's future reliance on fossil fuels.

Reynolds, 60, foresees a combination of space tourism, clean energy generation, and resource extraction, creating an economy for significant human habitation outside Earth's atmosphere. Does he see himself living in space in the future?

He said he could see himself living in a controlled environment made possible by what is called an O'Neill cylinder for a time. However, he added, "In a pioneering moon or Mars settlement? I'm probably a little old for that, alas. When I was younger, I would have said yes, and I thought I might even have the chance. Now, it seems likely that I'll visit space, if at all, only as a tourist."

Schumann, in his 30s, is slightly more optimistic about his options to blast off. Asked if he would like to live in space, he joked, "Well, I'd prefer it to dead." He said he thinks he and many peers will likely end up "working in outer space for short periods of time" and that future generations will probably venture further into space and stay longer.

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The future of space travel could include tourism and ...

Hypothetical travel between stars or planetary systems

Interstellar travel is the hypothetical travel by manned or unmanned spacecraft between stars or planetary systems in a galaxy. Interstellar travel would be much more difficult than interplanetary spaceflight. Whereas the distances between the planets in the Solar System are less than 30 astronomical units (AU), the distances between stars are typically hundreds of thousands of AU, and usually expressed in light-years. Because of the vastness of those distances, practical interstellar travel based on known physics would need to occur at a high percentage of the speed of light, allowing for significant travel times, at least decades to perhaps millennia or longer.[1]

The speeds required for interstellar travel in a human lifetime far exceed what current methods of space travel can provide. Even with a hypothetically perfectly efficient propulsion system, the kinetic energy corresponding to those speeds is enormous by today's standards of energy development. Moreover, collisions by the spacecraft with cosmic dust and gas can produce very dangerous effects both to passengers and the spacecraft itself.[1]

A number of strategies have been proposed to deal with these problems, ranging from giant arks that would carry entire societies and ecosystems, to microscopic space probes. Many different spacecraft propulsion systems have been proposed to give spacecraft the required speeds, including nuclear propulsion, beam-powered propulsion, and methods based on speculative physics.[2]

For both crewed and uncrewed interstellar travel, considerable technological and economic challenges need to be met. Even the most optimistic views about interstellar travel see it as only being feasible decades from now. However, in spite of the challenges, if or when interstellar travel is realized, a wide range of scientific benefits is expected.[3]

Most interstellar travel concepts require a developed space logistics system capable of moving millions of tonnes to a construction / operating location, and most would require gigawatt-scale power for construction or power (such as Star Wisp or Light Sail type concepts). Such a system could grow organically if space-based solar power became a significant component of Earth's energy mix. Consumer demand for a multi-terawatt system would automatically create the necessary multi-million ton/year logistical system.[4]

Distances between the planets in the Solar System are often measured in astronomical units (AU), defined as the average distance between the Sun and Earth, some 1.5108 kilometers (93million miles). Venus, the closest other planet to Earth is (at closest approach) 0.28 AU away. Neptune, the farthest planet from the Sun, is 29.8 AU away. As of January 25, 2020, Voyagerspaceprobe, the farthest human-made object from Earth, is 200 AU away.[5]

The closest known star, Proxima Centauri, is approximately 268,332AU away, or over 9,000 times farther away than Neptune.

Because of this, distances between stars are usually expressed in light-years (defined as the distance that light travels in vacuum in one Julian year) or in parsecs (one parsec is 3.26 ly, the distance at which stellar parallax is exactly one arcsecond, hence the name). Light in a vacuum travels around 300,000 kilometres (186,000mi) per second, so 1 light-year is about 9.4611012 kilometers (5.879trillion miles) or 63,241 AU. Proxima Centauri, the nearest (albeit not naked-eye visible) star, is 4.243 light-years away.

Another way of understanding the vastness of interstellar distances is by scaling: One of the closest stars to the Sun, Alpha Centauri A (a Sun-like star), can be pictured by scaling down the EarthSun distance to one meter (3.28ft). On this scale, the distance to Alpha Centauri A would be 276 kilometers (171 miles).

The fastest outward-bound spacecraft yet sent, Voyager 1, has covered 1/600 of a light-year in 30 years and is currently moving at 1/18,000 the speed of light. At this rate, a journey to Proxima Centauri would take 80,000 years.[6]

A significant factor contributing to the difficulty is the energy that must be supplied to obtain a reasonable travel time. A lower bound for the required energy is the kinetic energy K = 1 2 m v 2 {displaystyle K={tfrac {1}{2}}mv^{2}} where m {displaystyle m} is the final mass. If deceleration on arrival is desired and cannot be achieved by any means other than the engines of the ship, then the lower bound for the required energy is doubled to m v 2 {displaystyle mv^{2}} .[7]

The velocity for a crewed round trip of a few decades to even the nearest star is several thousand times greater than those of present space vehicles. This means that due to the v 2 {displaystyle v^{2}} term in the kinetic energy formula, millions of times as much energy is required. Accelerating one ton to one-tenth of the speed of light requires at least 450 petajoules or 4.501017 joules or 125 terawatt-hours[8] (world energy consumption 2008 was 143,851terawatt-hours),[9] without factoring in efficiency of the propulsion mechanism. This energy has to be generated onboard from stored fuel, harvested from the interstellar medium, or projected over immense distances.

A knowledge of the properties of the interstellar gas and dust through which the vehicle must pass is essential for the design of any interstellar space mission.[10] A major issue with traveling at extremely high speeds is that interstellar dust may cause considerable damage to the craft, due to the high relative speeds and large kinetic energies involved. Various shielding methods to mitigate this problem have been proposed.[11] Larger objects (such as macroscopic dust grains) are far less common, but would be much more destructive. The risks of impacting such objects, and methods of mitigating these risks, have been discussed in literature, but many unknowns remain[12] and, owing to the inhomogeneous distribution of interstellar matter around the Sun, will depend on direction travelled.[10] Although a high density interstellar medium may cause difficulties for many interstellar travel concepts, interstellar ramjets, and some proposed concepts for decelerating interstellar spacecraft, would actually benefit from a denser interstellar medium.[10]

The crew of an interstellar ship would face several significant hazards, including the psychological effects of long-term isolation, the effects of exposure to ionizing radiation, and the physiological effects of weightlessness to the muscles, joints, bones, immune system, and eyes. There also exists the risk of impact by micrometeoroids and other space debris. These risks represent challenges that have yet to be overcome.[13]

The physicist Robert L. Forward has argued that an interstellar mission that cannot be completed within 50 years should not be started at all. Instead, assuming that a civilization is still on an increasing curve of propulsion system velocity and not yet having reached the limit, the resources should be invested in designing a better propulsion system. This is because a slow spacecraft would probably be passed by another mission sent later with more advanced propulsion (the incessant obsolescence postulate).[14]

On the other hand, Andrew Kennedy has shown that if one calculates the journey time to a given destination as the rate of travel speed derived from growth (even exponential growth) increases, there is a clear minimum in the total time to that destination from now.[15] Voyages undertaken before the minimum will be overtaken by those that leave at the minimum, whereas voyages that leave after the minimum will never overtake those that left at the minimum.

There are 59 known stellar systems within 40 light years of the Sun, containing 81 visible stars. The following could be considered prime targets for interstellar missions:[14]

Existing and near-term astronomical technology is capable of finding planetary systems around these objects, increasing their potential for exploration

Slow interstellar missions based on current and near-future propulsion technologies are associated with trip times starting from about one hundred years to thousands of years. These missions consist of sending a robotic probe to a nearby star for exploration, similar to interplanetary probes such as used in the Voyager program.[20] By taking along no crew, the cost and complexity of the mission is significantly reduced although technology lifetime is still a significant issue next to obtaining a reasonable speed of travel. Proposed concepts include Project Daedalus, Project Icarus, Project Dragonfly, Project Longshot,[21] and more recently Breakthrough Starshot.[22]

Near-lightspeed nano spacecraft might be possible within the near future built on existing microchip technology with a newly developed nanoscale thruster. Researchers at the University of Michigan are developing thrusters that use nanoparticles as propellant. Their technology is called "nanoparticle field extraction thruster", or nanoFET. These devices act like small particle accelerators shooting conductive nanoparticles out into space.[23]

Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist, has suggested that clouds of "smart dust" be sent to the stars, which may become possible with advances in nanotechnology. Kaku also notes that a large number of nanoprobes would need to be sent due to the vulnerability of very small probes to be easily deflected by magnetic fields, micrometeorites and other dangers to ensure the chances that at least one nanoprobe will survive the journey and reach the destination.[24]

Given the light weight of these probes, it would take much less energy to accelerate them. With onboard solar cells, they could continually accelerate using solar power. One can envision a day when a fleet of millions or even billions of these particles swarm to distant stars at nearly the speed of light and relay signals back to Earth through a vast interstellar communication network.

As a near-term solution, small, laser-propelled interstellar probes, based on current CubeSat technology were proposed in the context of Project Dragonfly.[21]

In crewed missions, the duration of a slow interstellar journey presents a major obstacle and existing concepts deal with this problem in different ways.[25] They can be distinguished by the "state" in which humans are transported on-board of the spacecraft.

A generation ship (or world ship) is a type of interstellar ark in which the crew that arrives at the destination is descended from those who started the journey. Generation ships are not currently feasible because of the difficulty of constructing a ship of the enormous required scale and the great biological and sociological problems that life aboard such a ship raises.[26][27][28][29][30]

Scientists and writers have postulated various techniques for suspended animation. These include human hibernation and cryonic preservation. Although neither is currently practical, they offer the possibility of sleeper ships in which the passengers lie inert for the long duration of the voyage.[31]

A robotic interstellar mission carrying some number of frozen early stage human embryos is another theoretical possibility. This method of space colonization requires, among other things, the development of an artificial uterus, the prior detection of a habitable terrestrial planet, and advances in the field of fully autonomous mobile robots and educational robots that would replace human parents.[32]

Interstellar space is not completely empty; it contains trillions of icy bodies ranging from small asteroids (Oort cloud) to possible rogue planets. There may be ways to take advantage of these resources for a good part of an interstellar trip, slowly hopping from body to body or setting up waystations along the way.[33]

If a spaceship could average 10percent of light speed (and decelerate at the destination, for human crewed missions), this would be enough to reach Proxima Centauri in forty years. Several propulsion concepts have been proposed [34] that might be eventually developed to accomplish this (see Propulsion below), but none of them are ready for near-term (few decades) developments at acceptable cost.

Physicists generally believe faster-than-light travel is impossible. Relativistic time dilation allows a traveler to experience time more slowly, the closer their speed is to the speed of light.[35] This apparent slowing becomes noticeable when velocities above 80% of the speed of light are attained. Clocks aboard an interstellar ship would run slower than Earth clocks, so if a ship's engines were capable of continuously generating around 1g of acceleration (which is comfortable for humans), the ship could reach almost anywhere in the galaxy and return to Earth within 40 years ship-time (see diagram). Upon return, there would be a difference between the time elapsed on the astronaut's ship and the time elapsed on Earth.

For example, a spaceship could travel to a star 32 light-years away, initially accelerating at a constant 1.03g (i.e. 10.1m/s2) for 1.32 years (ship time), then stopping its engines and coasting for the next 17.3 years (ship time) at a constant speed, then decelerating again for 1.32 ship-years, and coming to a stop at the destination. After a short visit, the astronaut could return to Earth the same way. After the full round-trip, the clocks on board the ship show that 40 years have passed, but according to those on Earth, the ship comes back 76 years after launch.

From the viewpoint of the astronaut, onboard clocks seem to be running normally. The star ahead seems to be approaching at a speed of 0.87 light years per ship-year. The universe would appear contracted along the direction of travel to half the size it had when the ship was at rest; the distance between that star and the Sun would seem to be 16 light years as measured by the astronaut.

At higher speeds, the time on board will run even slower, so the astronaut could travel to the center of the Milky Way (30,000 light years from Earth) and back in 40 years ship-time. But the speed according to Earth clocks will always be less than 1 light year per Earth year, so, when back home, the astronaut will find that more than 60 thousand years will have passed on Earth.

Regardless of how it is achieved, a propulsion system that could produce acceleration continuously from departure to arrival would be the fastest method of travel. A constant acceleration journey is one where the propulsion system accelerates the ship at a constant rate for the first half of the journey, and then decelerates for the second half, so that it arrives at the destination stationary relative to where it began. If this were performed with an acceleration similar to that experienced at the Earth's surface, it would have the added advantage of producing artificial "gravity" for the crew. Supplying the energy required, however, would be prohibitively expensive with current technology.[37]

From the perspective of a planetary observer, the ship will appear to accelerate steadily at first, but then more gradually as it approaches the speed of light (which it cannot exceed). It will undergo hyperbolic motion.[38] The ship will be close to the speed of light after about a year of accelerating and remain at that speed until it brakes for the end of the journey.

From the perspective of an onboard observer, the crew will feel a gravitational field opposite the engine's acceleration, and the universe ahead will appear to fall in that field, undergoing hyperbolic motion. As part of this, distances between objects in the direction of the ship's motion will gradually contract until the ship begins to decelerate, at which time an onboard observer's experience of the gravitational field will be reversed.

When the ship reaches its destination, if it were to exchange a message with its origin planet, it would find that less time had elapsed on board than had elapsed for the planetary observer, due to time dilation and length contraction.

The result is an impressively fast journey for the crew.

All rocket concepts are limited by the rocket equation, which sets the characteristic velocity available as a function of exhaust velocity and mass ratio, the ratio of initial (M0, including fuel) to final (M1, fuel depleted) mass.

Very high specific power, the ratio of thrust to total vehicle mass, is required to reach interstellar targets within sub-century time-frames.[39] Some heat transfer is inevitable and a tremendous heating load must be adequately handled.

Thus, for interstellar rocket concepts of all technologies, a key engineering problem (seldom explicitly discussed) is limiting the heat transfer from the exhaust stream back into the vehicle.[40]

A type of electric propulsion, spacecraft such as Dawn use an ion engine. In an ion engine, electric power is used to create charged particles of the propellant, usually the gas xenon, and accelerate them to extremely high velocities. The exhaust velocity of conventional rockets is limited by the chemical energy stored in the fuel's molecular bonds, which limits the thrust to about 5km/s. They produce a high thrust (about 10 N), but they have a low specific impulse, and that limits their top speed. By contrast, ion engines have low force, but the top speed in principle is limited only by the electrical power available on the spacecraft and on the gas ions being accelerated. The exhaust speed of the charged particles range from 15km/s to 35km/s.[41]

Nuclear-electric or plasma engines, operating for long periods at low thrust and powered by fission reactors, have the potential to reach speeds much greater than chemically powered vehicles or nuclear-thermal rockets. Such vehicles probably have the potential to power solar system exploration with reasonable trip times within the current century. Because of their low-thrust propulsion, they would be limited to off-planet, deep-space operation. Electrically powered spacecraft propulsion powered by a portable power-source, say a nuclear reactor, producing only small accelerations, would take centuries to reach for example 15% of the velocity of light, thus unsuitable for interstellar flight during a single human lifetime.[42]

Fission-fragment rockets use nuclear fission to create high-speed jets of fission fragments, which are ejected at speeds of up to 12,000km/s (7,500mi/s). With fission, the energy output is approximately 0.1% of the total mass-energy of the reactor fuel and limits the effective exhaust velocity to about 5% of the velocity of light. For maximum velocity, the reaction mass should optimally consist of fission products, the "ash" of the primary energy source, so no extra reaction mass need be bookkept in the mass ratio.

Based on work in the late 1950s to the early 1960s, it has been technically possible to build spaceships with nuclear pulse propulsion engines, i.e. driven by a series of nuclear explosions. This propulsion system contains the prospect of very high specific impulse (space travel's equivalent of fuel economy) and high specific power.[43]

Project Orion team member Freeman Dyson proposed in 1968 an interstellar spacecraft using nuclear pulse propulsion that used pure deuterium fusion detonations with a very high fuel-burnup fraction. He computed an exhaust velocity of 15,000km/s and a 100,000-tonne space vehicle able to achieve a 20,000km/s delta-v allowing a flight-time to Alpha Centauri of 130 years.[44] Later studies indicate that the top cruise velocity that can theoretically be achieved by a Teller-Ulam thermonuclear unit powered Orion starship, assuming no fuel is saved for slowing back down, is about 8% to 10% of the speed of light (0.08-0.1c).[45] An atomic (fission) Orion can achieve perhaps 3%-5% of the speed of light. A nuclear pulse drive starship powered by fusion-antimatter catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion units would be similarly in the 10% range and pure matter-antimatter annihilation rockets would be theoretically capable of obtaining a velocity between 50% to 80% of the speed of light. In each case saving fuel for slowing down halves the maximum speed. The concept of using a magnetic sail to decelerate the spacecraft as it approaches its destination has been discussed as an alternative to using propellant, this would allow the ship to travel near the maximum theoretical velocity.[46] Alternative designs utilizing similar principles include Project Longshot, Project Daedalus, and Mini-Mag Orion. The principle of external nuclear pulse propulsion to maximize survivable power has remained common among serious concepts for interstellar flight without external power beaming and for very high-performance interplanetary flight.

In the 1970s the Nuclear Pulse Propulsion concept further was refined by Project Daedalus by use of externally triggered inertial confinement fusion, in this case producing fusion explosions via compressing fusion fuel pellets with high-powered electron beams. Since then, lasers, ion beams, neutral particle beams and hyper-kinetic projectiles have been suggested to produce nuclear pulses for propulsion purposes.[47]

A current impediment to the development of any nuclear-explosion-powered spacecraft is the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, which includes a prohibition on the detonation of any nuclear devices (even non-weapon based) in outer space. This treaty would, therefore, need to be renegotiated, although a project on the scale of an interstellar mission using currently foreseeable technology would probably require international cooperation on at least the scale of the International Space Station.

Another issue to be considered, would be the g-forces imparted to a rapidly accelerated spacecraft, cargo, and passengers inside (see Inertia negation).

Fusion rocket starships, powered by nuclear fusion reactions, should conceivably be able to reach speeds of the order of 10% of that of light, based on energy considerations alone. In theory, a large number of stages could push a vehicle arbitrarily close to the speed of light.[48] These would "burn" such light element fuels as deuterium, tritium, 3He, 11B, and 7Li. Because fusion yields about 0.30.9% of the mass of the nuclear fuel as released energy, it is energetically more favorable than fission, which releases <0.1% of the fuel's mass-energy. The maximum exhaust velocities potentially energetically available are correspondingly higher than for fission, typically 410% of c. However, the most easily achievable fusion reactions release a large fraction of their energy as high-energy neutrons, which are a significant source of energy loss. Thus, although these concepts seem to offer the best (nearest-term) prospects for travel to the nearest stars within a (long) human lifetime, they still involve massive technological and engineering difficulties, which may turn out to be intractable for decades or centuries.

Early studies include Project Daedalus, performed by the British Interplanetary Society in 19731978, and Project Longshot, a student project sponsored by NASA and the US Naval Academy, completed in 1988. Another fairly detailed vehicle system, "Discovery II",[49] designed and optimized for crewed Solar System exploration, based on the D3He reaction but using hydrogen as reaction mass, has been described by a team from NASA's Glenn Research Center. It achieves characteristic velocities of >300km/s with an acceleration of ~1.7103 g, with a ship initial mass of ~1700 metric tons, and payload fraction above 10%. Although these are still far short of the requirements for interstellar travel on human timescales, the study seems to represent a reasonable benchmark towards what may be approachable within several decades, which is not impossibly beyond the current state-of-the-art. Based on the concept's 2.2% burnup fraction it could achieve a pure fusion product exhaust velocity of ~3,000km/s.

An antimatter rocket would have a far higher energy density and specific impulse than any other proposed class of rocket.[34] If energy resources and efficient production methods are found to make antimatter in the quantities required and store[50][51] it safely, it would be theoretically possible to reach speeds of several tens of percent that of light.[34] Whether antimatter propulsion could lead to the higher speeds (>90% that of light) at which relativistic time dilation would become more noticeable, thus making time pass at a slower rate for the travelers as perceived by an outside observer, is doubtful owing to the large quantity of antimatter that would be required.[34]

Speculating that production and storage of antimatter should become feasible, two further issues need to be considered. First, in the annihilation of antimatter, much of the energy is lost as high-energy gamma radiation, and especially also as neutrinos, so that only about 40% of mc2 would actually be available if the antimatter were simply allowed to annihilate into radiations thermally.[34] Even so, the energy available for propulsion would be substantially higher than the ~1% of mc2 yield of nuclear fusion, the next-best rival candidate.

Second, heat transfer from the exhaust to the vehicle seems likely to transfer enormous wasted energy into the ship (e.g. for 0.1g ship acceleration, approaching 0.3 trillion watts per ton of ship mass), considering the large fraction of the energy that goes into penetrating gamma rays. Even assuming shielding was provided to protect the payload (and passengers on a crewed vehicle), some of the energy would inevitably heat the vehicle, and may thereby prove a limiting factor if useful accelerations are to be achieved.

More recently, Friedwardt Winterberg proposed that a matter-antimatter GeV gamma ray laser photon rocket is possible by a relativistic proton-antiproton pinch discharge, where the recoil from the laser beam is transmitted by the Mssbauer effect to the spacecraft.[52]

Rockets deriving their power from external sources, such as a laser, could replace their internal energy source with an energy collector, potentially reducing the mass of the ship greatly and allowing much higher travel speeds. Geoffrey A. Landis has proposed for an interstellar probe, with energy supplied by an external laser from a base station powering an Ion thruster.[53]

A problem with all traditional rocket propulsion methods is that the spacecraft would need to carry its fuel with it, thus making it very massive, in accordance with the rocket equation. Several concepts attempt to escape from this problem:[34][54]

A radio frequency (RF) resonant cavity thruster is a device that is claimed to be a spacecraft thruster. In 2016, the Advanced Propulsion Physics Laboratory at NASA reported observing a small apparent thrust from one such test, a result not since replicated.[55] One of the designs is called EMDrive. In December 2002, Satellite Propulsion Research Ltd described a working prototype with an alleged total thrust of about 0.02 newtons powered by an 850 W cavity magnetron. The device could operate for only a few dozen seconds before the magnetron failed, due to overheating.[56] The latest test on the EMDrive concluded that it does not work.[57]

Proposed in 2019 by NASA scientist Dr. David Burns, the helical engine concept would use a particle accelerator to accelerate particles to near the speed of light. Since particles traveling at such speeds acquire more mass, it is believed that this mass change could create acceleration. According to Burns, the spacecraft could theoretically reach 99% the speed of light.[58]

In 1960, Robert W. Bussard proposed the Bussard ramjet, a fusion rocket in which a huge scoop would collect the diffuse hydrogen in interstellar space, "burn" it on the fly using a protonproton chain reaction, and expel it out of the back. Later calculations with more accurate estimates suggest that the thrust generated would be less than the drag caused by any conceivable scoop design.[citation needed] Yet the idea is attractive because the fuel would be collected en route (commensurate with the concept of energy harvesting), so the craft could theoretically accelerate to near the speed of light. The limitation is due to the fact that the reaction can only accelerate the propellant to 0.12c. Thus the drag of catching interstellar dust and the thrust of accelerating that same dust to 0.12c would be the same when the speed is 0.12c, preventing further acceleration.

A light sail or magnetic sail powered by a massive laser or particle accelerator in the home star system could potentially reach even greater speeds than rocket- or pulse propulsion methods, because it would not need to carry its own reaction mass and therefore would only need to accelerate the craft's payload. Robert L. Forward proposed a means for decelerating an interstellar light sail in the destination star system without requiring a laser array to be present in that system. In this scheme, a smaller secondary sail is deployed to the rear of the spacecraft, whereas the large primary sail is detached from the craft to keep moving forward on its own. Light is reflected from the large primary sail to the secondary sail, which is used to decelerate the secondary sail and the spacecraft payload.[59] In 2002, Geoffrey A. Landis of NASA's Glen Research center also proposed a laser-powered, propulsion, sail ship that would host a diamond sail (of a few nanometers thick) powered with the use of solar energy.[60] With this proposal, this interstellar ship would, theoretically, be able to reach 10 percent the speed of light.

A magnetic sail could also decelerate at its destination without depending on carried fuel or a driving beam in the destination system, by interacting with the plasma found in the solar wind of the destination star and the interstellar medium.[61][62]

The following table lists some example concepts using beamed laser propulsion as proposed by the physicist Robert L. Forward:[63]

The following table is based on work by Heller, Hippke and Kervella.[64]

Achieving start-stop interstellar trip times of less than a human lifetime require mass-ratios of between 1,000 and 1,000,000, even for the nearer stars. This could be achieved by multi-staged vehicles on a vast scale.[48] Alternatively large linear accelerators could propel fuel to fission propelled space-vehicles, avoiding the limitations of the Rocket equation.[65]

Scientists and authors have postulated a number of ways by which it might be possible to surpass the speed of light, but even the most serious-minded of these are highly speculative.[66]

It is also debatable whether faster-than-light travel is physically possible, in part because of causality concerns: travel faster than light may, under certain conditions, permit travel backwards in time within the context of special relativity.[67] Proposed mechanisms for faster-than-light travel within the theory of general relativity require the existence of exotic matter[66] and it is not known if this could be produced in sufficient quantity.

In physics, the Alcubierre drive is based on an argument, within the framework of general relativity and without the introduction of wormholes, that it is possible to modify spacetime in a way that allows a spaceship to travel with an arbitrarily large speed by a local expansion of spacetime behind the spaceship and an opposite contraction in front of it.[68] Nevertheless, this concept would require the spaceship to incorporate a region of exotic matter, or hypothetical concept of negative mass.[68]

A theoretical idea for enabling interstellar travel is by propelling a starship by creating an artificial black hole and using a parabolic reflector to reflect its Hawking radiation. Although beyond current technological capabilities, a black hole starship offers some advantages compared to other possible methods. Getting the black hole to act as a power source and engine also requires a way to convert the Hawking radiation into energy and thrust. One potential method involves placing the hole at the focal point of a parabolic reflector attached to the ship, creating forward thrust. A slightly easier, but less efficient method would involve simply absorbing all the gamma radiation heading towards the fore of the ship to push it onwards, and let the rest shoot out the back.[69][70][71]

Wormholes are conjectural distortions in spacetime that theorists postulate could connect two arbitrary points in the universe, across an EinsteinRosen Bridge. It is not known whether wormholes are possible in practice. Although there are solutions to the Einstein equation of general relativity that allow for wormholes, all of the currently known solutions involve some assumption, for example the existence of negative mass, which may be unphysical.[72] However, Cramer et al. argue that such wormholes might have been created in the early universe, stabilized by cosmic strings.[73] The general theory of wormholes is discussed by Visser in the book Lorentzian Wormholes.[74]

The Enzmann starship, as detailed by G. Harry Stine in the October 1973 issue of Analog, was a design for a future starship, based on the ideas of Robert Duncan-Enzmann. The spacecraft itself as proposed used a 12,000,000 ton ball of frozen deuterium to power 1224 thermonuclear pulse propulsion units. Twice as long as the Empire State Building and assembled in-orbit, the spacecraft was part of a larger project preceded by interstellar probes and telescopic observation of target star systems.[75]

Project Hyperion, one of the projects of Icarus Interstellar has looked into various feasibility issues of crewed interstellar travel.[76][77][78] Its members continue to publish on crewed interstellar travel in collaboration with the Initiative for Interstellar Studies.[79]

NASA has been researching interstellar travel since its formation, translating important foreign language papers and conducting early studies on applying fusion propulsion, in the 1960s, and laser propulsion, in the 1970s, to interstellar travel.

In 1994, NASA and JPL cosponsored a "Workshop on Advanced Quantum/Relativity Theory Propulsion" to "establish and use new frames of reference for thinking about the faster-than-light (FTL) question".[80]

The NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program (terminated in FY 2003 after a 6-year, $1.2-million study, because "No breakthroughs appear imminent.")[81] identified some breakthroughs that are needed for interstellar travel to be possible.[82]

Geoffrey A. Landis of NASA's Glenn Research Center states that a laser-powered interstellar sail ship could possibly be launched within 50 years, using new methods of space travel. "Ithink that ultimately we're going to do it, it's just a question of when and who," Landis said in an interview. Rockets are too slow to send humans on interstellar missions. Instead, he envisions interstellar craft with extensive sails, propelled by laser light to about one-tenth the speed of light. It would take such a ship about 43 years to reach Alpha Centauri if it passed through the system without stopping. Slowing down to stop at Alpha Centauri could increase the trip to 100 years,[83] whereas a journey without slowing down raises the issue of making sufficiently accurate and useful observations and measurements during a fly-by.

The 100 Year Starship (100YSS) is the name of the overall effort that will, over the next century, work toward achieving interstellar travel. The effort will also go by the moniker 100YSS. The 100 Year Starship study is the name of a one-year project to assess the attributes of and lay the groundwork for an organization that can carry forward the 100 Year Starship vision.

Harold ("Sonny") White[84] from NASA's Johnson Space Center is a member of Icarus Interstellar,[85] the nonprofit foundation whose mission is to realize interstellar flight before the year 2100. At the 2012 meeting of 100YSS, he reported using a laser to try to warp spacetime by 1 part in 10 million with the aim of helping to make interstellar travel possible.[86]

A few organisations dedicated to interstellar propulsion research and advocacy for the case exist worldwide. These are still in their infancy, but are already backed up by a membership of a wide variety of scientists, students and professionals.

The energy requirements make interstellar travel very difficult. It has been reported that at the 2008 Joint Propulsion Conference, multiple experts opined that it was improbable that humans would ever explore beyond the Solar System.[97] Brice N. Cassenti, an associate professor with the Department of Engineering and Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, stated that at least 100 times the total energy output of the entire world [in a given year] would be required to send a probe to the nearest star.[97]

Astrophysicist Sten Odenwald stated that the basic problem is that through intensive studies of thousands of detected exoplanets, most of the closest destinations within 50 light years do not yield Earth-like planets in the star's habitable zones.[98] Given the multitrillion-dollar expense of some of the proposed technologies, travelers will have to spend up to 200 years traveling at 20% the speed of light to reach the best known destinations. Moreover, once the travelers arrive at their destination (by any means), they will not be able to travel down to the surface of the target world and set up a colony unless the atmosphere is non-lethal. The prospect of making such a journey, only to spend the rest of the colony's life inside a sealed habitat and venturing outside in a spacesuit, may eliminate many prospective targets from the list.

Moving at a speed close to the speed of light and encountering even a tiny stationary object like a grain of sand will have fatal consequences. For example, a gram of matter moving at 90% of the speed of light contains a kinetic energy corresponding to a small nuclear bomb (around 30kt TNT).

Explorative high-speed missions to Alpha Centauri, as planned for by the Breakthrough Starshot initiative, are projected to be realizable within the 21st century.[99] It is alternatively possible to plan for uncrewed slow-cruising missions taking millennia to arrive. These probes would not be for human benefit in the sense that one can not foresee whether there would be anybody around on earth interested in then back-transmitted science data. An example would be the Genesis mission,[100] which aims to bring unicellular life, in the spirit of directed panspermia, to habitable but otherwise barren planets.[101] Comparatively slow cruising Genesis probes, with a typical speed of c / 300 {displaystyle c/300} , corresponding to about 1000 km/s {displaystyle 1000,{mbox{km/s}}} , can be decelerated using a magnetic sail. Uncrewed missions not for human benefit would hence be feasible.[102]

In February 2017, NASA announced that its Spitzer Space Telescope had revealed seven Earth-size planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system orbiting an ultra-cool dwarf star 40 light-years away from the Solar System.[103] Three of these planets are firmly located in the habitable zone, the area around the parent star where a rocky planet is most likely to have liquid water. The discovery sets a new record for greatest number of habitable-zone planets found around a single star outside the Solar System. All of these seven planets could have liquid water the key to life as we know it under the right atmospheric conditions, but the chances are highest with the three in the habitable zone.

Link:

Interstellar travel - Wikipedia

Flight into or through outer space

Spaceflight (or space flight) is flight into or through outer space and an application of astronautics. Spaceflight can occur with spacecraft with or without humans on board. Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union was the first human to conduct a spaceflight. Examples of human spaceflight include the U.S. Apollo Moon landing and Space Shuttle programs and the Russian Soyuz program, as well as the ongoing International Space Station. Examples of uncrewed spaceflight include space probes that leave Earth orbit, as well as satellites in orbit around Earth, such as communications satellites. These operate either by telerobotic control or are fully autonomous.

Spaceflight is used in space exploration, and also in commercial activities like space tourism and satellite telecommunications. Additional non-commercial uses of spaceflight include space observatories, reconnaissance satellites and other Earth observation satellites.

Spaceflight can be achieved with different types of launch systems, conventionally by rocket launching, which provide the initial thrust to overcome the force of gravity and propel a spacecraft from the surface of the Earth. Once in space, the motion of a spacecraft both when unpropelled and when under propulsion is covered by the area of study called astrodynamics. Some spacecraft remain in space indefinitely, some disintegrate during atmospheric reentry, and others reach a planetary or lunar surface for landing or impact.

The first theoretical proposal of space travel using rockets was published by Scottish astronomer and mathematician William Leitch, in an 1861 essay "A Journey Through Space".[1] More well-known (though not widely outside Russia) is Konstantin Tsiolkovsky's work, " " (The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices), published in 1903.

Tsiolkovsky's rocketry work was not fully appreciated in his lifetime, but he influenced Sergey Korolev, who became the Soviet Union's chief rocket designer under Joseph Stalin, to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles to carry nuclear weapons as a counter measure to United States bomber planes. Derivatives of Korolev's R-7 Semyorka missiles were used to launch the world's first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957, and later the first human to orbit the Earth, Yuri Gagarin in Vostok 1, on April 12, 1961.[2]

Spaceflight became an engineering possibility with the work of Robert H. Goddard's publication in 1919 of his paper A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes. His application of the de Laval nozzle to liquid fuel rockets improved efficiency enough for interplanetary travel to become possible. He also proved in the laboratory that rockets would work in the vacuum of space;[specify] nonetheless, his work was not taken seriously by the public. His attempt to secure an Army contract for a rocket-propelled weapon in the first World War was defeated by the November 11, 1918 armistice with Germany.Working with private financial support, he was the first to launch a liquid-fueled rocket in 1926. Goddard's papers were highly influential internationally in his field.

In the course of World War II the first guided rockets, the V-2 were developed and employed as weapons by the Third Reich. At a test flight in June 1944 one such rocket reached space at an altitude of 189 kilometers (102 nautical miles), becoming the first object in human history to do so.[3] At the end of World War II, most of the V-2 rocket team including its head Wernher von Braun surrendered to the United States, and were expatriated to work on American missiles at what became the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. This work on missiles such as Juno I and Atlas enabled launch of the first US satellite Explorer 1 on February 1, 1958, and the first American in orbit, John Glenn in Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962. As director of the Marshall Space Flight Center, Von Braun oversaw development of a larger class of rocket called Saturn, which allowed the US to send the first two humans, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, to the Moon and back on Apollo 11 in July 1969. At the same time, the Soviet Union secretly tried but failed to develop the N1 rocket, meant to give them the capability to land humans on the Moon.

Rockets are the only means currently capable of reaching orbit or beyond. Other non-rocket spacelaunch technologies have yet to be built, or remain short of orbital speeds.A rocket launch for a spaceflight usually starts from a spaceport (cosmodrome), which may be equipped with launch complexes and launch pads for vertical rocket launches, and runways for takeoff and landing of carrier airplanes and winged spacecraft. Spaceports are situated well away from human habitation for noise and safety reasons. ICBMs have various special launching facilities.

A launch is often restricted to certain launch windows. These windows depend upon the position of celestial bodies and orbits relative to the launch site. The biggest influence is often the rotation of the Earth itself. Once launched, orbits are normally located within relatively constant flat planes at a fixed angle to the axis of the Earth, and the Earth rotates within this orbit.

A launch pad is a fixed structure designed to dispatch airborne vehicles. It generally consists of a launch tower and flame trench. It is surrounded by equipment used to erect, fuel, and maintain launch vehicles. Before launch, the rocket can weigh many hundreds of tonnes. The Space Shuttle Columbia, on STS-1, weighed 2,030 tonnes (4,480,000lb) at takeoff.

The most commonly used definition of outer space is everything beyond the Krmn line, which is 100 kilometers (62mi) above the Earth's surface. The United States sometimes defines outer space as everything beyond 50 miles (80km) in altitude.

Rocket engines are the only currently practical means of reaching space. Conventional airplane engines cannot reach space due to the lack of oxygen. Rocket engines expel propellant to provide forward thrust that generates enough delta-v (change in velocity) to reach orbit.

For crewed launch systems launch escape systems are frequently fitted to allow astronauts to escape in the case of emergency.

Many ways to reach space other than rocket engines have been proposed. Ideas such as the space elevator, and momentum exchange tethers like rotovators or skyhooks require new materials much stronger than any currently known. Electromagnetic launchers such as launch loops might be feasible with current technology. Other ideas include rocket assisted aircraft/spaceplanes such as Reaction Engines Skylon (currently in early stage development), scramjet powered spaceplanes, and RBCC powered spaceplanes. Gun launch has been proposed for cargo.

Achieving a closed orbit is not essential to lunar and interplanetary voyages. Early Soviet space vehicles successfully achieved very high altitudes without going into orbit. NASA considered launching Apollo missions directly into lunar trajectories but adopted the strategy of first entering a temporary parking orbit and then performing a separate burn several orbits later onto a lunar trajectory.[5]

The parking orbit approach greatly simplified Apollo mission planning in several important ways. It acted as a "time buffer" and substantially widened the allowable launch windows. The parking orbit gave the crew and controllers several hours to thoroughly check out the spacecraft after the stresses of launch before committing it for a long journey to the Moon.[5]

Apollo missions minimized the performance penalty of the parking orbit by keeping its altitude as low as possible. For example, Apollo 15 used an unusually low parking orbit of 92.5nmi 91.5nmi (171.3km 169.5km) which is not sustainable for very long due to friction with the Earth's atmosphere, but the crew would only spend three hours before reigniting the S-IVB third stage to put them on a lunar-bound trajectory.[6]

Robotic missions do not require an abort capability or radiation minimization, and because modern launchers routinely meet "instantaneous" launch windows, space probes to the Moon and other planets generally use direct injection to maximize performance. Although some might coast briefly during the launch sequence, they do not complete one or more full parking orbits before the burn that injects them onto an Earth escape trajectory.

The escape velocity from a celestial body decreases with altitude above that body. However, it is more fuel-efficient for a craft to burn its fuel as close to the ground as possible; see Oberth effect and reference.[7] This is anotherway to explain the performance penalty associated with establishing the safe perigee of a parking orbit.

Astrodynamics is the study of spacecraft trajectories, particularly as they relate to gravitational and propulsion effects. Astrodynamics allows for a spacecraft to arrive at its destination at the correct time without excessive propellant use. An orbital maneuvering system may be needed to maintain or change orbits.

Non-rocket orbital propulsion methods include solar sails, magnetic sails, plasma-bubble magnetic systems, and using gravitational slingshot effects.

The term "transfer energy" means the total amount of energy imparted by a rocket stage to its payload. This can be the energy imparted by a first stage of a launch vehicle to an upper stage plus payload, or by an upper stage or spacecraft kick motor to a spacecraft.[8][9]

In order to reach towards a space station, a spacecraft would have to arrive at the same orbit and approach to a very close distance (e.g. within visual contact). This is done by a set of orbital maneuvers called space rendezvous.

After rendezvousing with the space station, the space vehicle then docks or berths with the station. Docking refers to joining of two separate free-flying space vehicles,[10][11][12][13] while berthing refers to mating operations where an inactive vehicle is placed into the mating interface of another space vehicle by using a robotic arm.[10][12][13]

Vehicles in orbit have large amounts of kinetic energy. This energy must be discarded if the vehicle is to land safely without vaporizing in the atmosphere. Typically this process requires special methods to protect against aerodynamic heating. The theory behind reentry was developed by Harry Julian Allen. Based on this theory, reentry vehicles present blunt shapes to the atmosphere for reentry. Blunt shapes mean that less than 1% of the kinetic energy ends up as heat that reaches the vehicle, and the remainder heats up the atmosphere.

The Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo capsules all splashed down in the sea. These capsules were designed to land at relatively low speeds with the help of a parachute. Soviet/Russian capsules for Soyuz make use of a big parachute and braking rockets to touch down on land. Spaceplanes like the Space Shuttle land like a glider.

After a successful landing the spacecraft, its occupants and cargo can be recovered. In some cases, recovery has occurred before landing: while a spacecraft is still descending on its parachute, it can be snagged by a specially designed aircraft. This mid-air retrieval technique was used to recover the film canisters from the Corona spy satellites.

Uncrewed spaceflight is all spaceflight activity without a necessary human presence in space. This includes all space probes, satellites and robotic spacecraft and missions. Uncrewed spaceflight is the opposite of crewed spaceflight, which is usually called human spaceflight. Subcategories of uncrewed spaceflight are "robotic spacecraft" (objects) and "robotic space missions" (activities). A robotic spacecraft is an uncrewed spacecraft with no humans on board, that is usually under telerobotic control. A robotic spacecraft designed to make scientific research measurements is often called a space probe.

Uncrewed space missions use remote-controlled spacecraft. The first uncrewed space mission was Sputnik, launched October 4, 1957 to orbit the Earth. Space missions where other animals but no humans are on-board are considered uncrewed missions.

Many space missions are more suited to telerobotic rather than crewed operation, due to lower cost and lower risk factors. In addition, some planetary destinations such as Venus or the vicinity of Jupiter are too hostile for human survival, given current technology. Outer planets such as Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are too distant to reach with current crewed spaceflight technology, so telerobotic probes are the only way to explore them. Telerobotics also allows exploration of regions that are vulnerable to contamination by Earth micro-organisms since spacecraft can be sterilized. Humans can not be sterilized in the same way as a spaceship, as they coexist with numerous micro-organisms, and these micro-organisms are also hard to contain within a spaceship or spacesuit.

Telerobotics becomes telepresence when the time delay is short enough to permit control of the spacecraft in close to real time by humans. Even the two seconds light speed delay for the Moon is too far away for telepresence exploration from Earth. The L1 and L2 positions permit 400-millisecond round trip delays, which is just close enough for telepresence operation. Telepresence has also been suggested as a way to repair satellites in Earth orbit from Earth. The Exploration Telerobotics Symposium in 2012 explored this and other topics.[14]

The first human spaceflight was Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961, on which cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin of the USSR made one orbit around the Earth. In official Soviet documents, there is no mention of the fact that Gagarin parachuted the final seven miles.[15] As of 2020, the only spacecraft regularly used for human spaceflight are Soyuz, Shenzhou, and Crew Dragon. The U.S. Space Shuttle fleet operated from April 1981 until July 2011. SpaceShipOne has conducted two human suborbital spaceflights.

On a sub-orbital spaceflight the spacecraft reaches space and then returns to the atmosphere after following a (primarily) ballistic trajectory. This is usually because of insufficient specific orbital energy, in which case a suborbital flight will last only a few minutes, but it is also possible for an object with enough energy for an orbit to have a trajectory that intersects the Earth's atmosphere, sometimes after many hours. Pioneer 1 was NASA's first space probe intended to reach the Moon. A partial failure caused it to instead follow a suborbital trajectory to an altitude of 113,854 kilometers (70,746mi) before reentering the Earth's atmosphere 43 hours after launch.

The most generally recognized boundary of space is the Krmn line 100km (62mi) above sea level. (NASA alternatively defines an astronaut as someone who has flown more than 80km (50mi) above sea level.) It is not generally recognized by the public that the increase in potential energy required to pass the Krmn line is only about 3% of the orbital energy (potential plus kinetic energy) required by the lowest possible Earth orbit (a circular orbit just above the Krmn line.) In other words, it is far easier to reach space than to stay there. On May 17, 2004, Civilian Space eXploration Team launched the GoFast rocket on a suborbital flight, the first amateur spaceflight. On June 21, 2004, SpaceShipOne was used for the first privately funded human spaceflight.

Point-to-point is a category of sub-orbital spaceflight in which a spacecraft provides rapid transport between two terrestrial locations. A conventional airline route between London and Sydney, a flight that normally lasts over twenty hours. With point-to-point suborbital travel the same route could be traversed in less than one hour.[16] While no company offers this type of transportation today, SpaceX has revealed plans to do so as early as the 2020s using Starship.[17] Suborbital spaceflight over an intercontinental distance requires a vehicle velocity that is only a little lower than the velocity required to reach low Earth orbit.[18] If rockets are used, the size of the rocket relative to the payload is similar to an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). Any intercontinental spaceflight has to surmount problems of heating during atmosphere re-entry that are nearly as large as those faced by orbital spaceflight.

A minimal orbital spaceflight requires much higher velocities than a minimal sub-orbital flight, and so it is technologically much more challenging to achieve. To achieve orbital spaceflight, the tangential velocity around the Earth is as important as altitude. In order to perform a stable and lasting flight in space, the spacecraft must reach the minimal orbital speed required for a closed orbit.

Interplanetary spaceflight is flight between planets within a single planetary system. In practice, the use of the term is confined to travel between the planets of our Solar System. Plans for future crewed interplanetary spaceflight missions often include final vehicle assembly in Earth orbit, such as NASA's Constellation program and Russia's Kliper/Parom tandem.

New Horizons is the fifth spacecraft put on an escape trajectory leaving the Solar System. Voyager 1, Voyager 2, Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11 are the earlier ones. The one farthest from the Sun is Voyager 1, which is more than 100 AU distant and is moving at 3.6 AU per year.[19] In comparison, Proxima Centauri, the closest star other than the Sun, is 267,000 AU distant. It will take Voyager 1 over 74,000 years to reach this distance. Vehicle designs using other techniques, such as nuclear pulse propulsion are likely to be able to reach the nearest star significantly faster. Another possibility that could allow for human interstellar spaceflight is to make use of time dilation, as this would make it possible for passengers in a fast-moving vehicle to travel further into the future while aging very little, in that their great speed slows down the rate of passage of on-board time. However, attaining such high speeds would still require the use of some new, advanced method of propulsion.

Intergalactic travel involves spaceflight between galaxies, and is considered much more technologically demanding than even interstellar travel and, by current engineering terms, is considered science fiction.

Spacecraft are vehicles capable of controlling their trajectory through space.

The first 'true spacecraft' is sometimes said to be Apollo Lunar Module,[20] since this was the only crewed vehicle to have been designed for, and operated only in space; and is notable for its non-aerodynamic shape.

Spacecraft today predominantly use rockets for propulsion, but other propulsion techniques such as ion drives are becoming more common, particularly for uncrewed vehicles, and this can significantly reduce the vehicle's mass and increase its delta-v.

Launch systems are used to carry a payload from Earth's surface into outer space.

Most current spaceflight uses multi-stage expendable launch systems to reach space.

The first reusable spacecraft, the X-15, was air-launched on a suborbital trajectory on 19 July 1963. The first partially reusable orbital spacecraft, the Space Shuttle, was launched by the USA on the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight, on 12 April 1981. During the Shuttle era, six orbiters were built, all of which flown in the atmosphere and five of which flown in space. The Enterprise was used only for approach and landing tests, launching from the back of a Boeing 747 and gliding to deadstick landings at Edwards AFB, California. The first Space Shuttle to fly into space was the Columbia, followed by the Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour. The Endeavour was built to replace the Challenger, which was lost in January 1986. The Columbia broke up during reentry in February 2003.

The first automatic partially reusable spacecraft was the Buran (Snowstorm), launched by the USSR on 15 November 1988, although it made only one flight. This spaceplane was designed for a crew and strongly resembled the US Space Shuttle, although its drop-off boosters used liquid propellants and its main engines were located at the base of what would be the external tank in the American Shuttle. Lack of funding, complicated by the dissolution of the USSR, prevented any further flights of Buran.

The Space Shuttle was retired in 2011 due mainly to its old age and high cost of the program reaching over a billion dollars per flight. The Shuttle's human transport role is to be replaced by the SpaceX Dragon 2 and CST-100 in 2020s. The Shuttle's heavy cargo transport role is replaced by commercial launch vehicles.

Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne was a reusable suborbital spaceplane that carried pilots Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie on consecutive flights in 2004 to win the Ansari X Prize. The Spaceship Company has built its successor SpaceShipTwo. A fleet of SpaceShipTwos operated by Virgin Galactic planned to begin reusable private spaceflight carrying paying passengers (space tourists) in 2008, but this was delayed due to an accident in the propulsion development.[21]

SpaceX achieved the first vertical soft landing of a re-usable orbital rocket stage on December 21, 2015, after delivering 11 Orbcomm OG-2 commercial satellites into low Earth orbit.[22]

The first Falcon 9 second flight occurred on 30 March 2017.[23] SpaceX now routinely recovers and reuses their first stages, with the intent of reusing fairings as well.[24]

All launch vehicles contain a huge amount of energy that is needed for some part of it to reach orbit. There is therefore some risk that this energy can be released prematurely and suddenly, with significant effects. When a Delta II rocket exploded 13 seconds after launch on January 17, 1997, there were reports of store windows 10 miles (16km) away being broken by the blast.[25]

Space is a fairly predictable environment, but there are still risks of accidental depressurization and the potential failure of equipment, some of which may be very newly developed.

In 2004 the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety was established in the Netherlands to further international cooperation and scientific advancement in space systems safety.[26]

In a microgravity environment such as that provided by a spacecraft in orbit around the Earth, humans experience a sense of "weightlessness." Short-term exposure to microgravity causes space adaptation syndrome, a self-limiting nausea caused by derangement of the vestibular system. Long-term exposure causes multiple health issues. The most significant is bone loss, some of which is permanent, but microgravity also leads to significant deconditioning of muscular and cardiovascular tissues.

Once above the atmosphere, radiation due to the Van Allen belts, solar radiation and cosmic radiation issues occur and increase. Further away from the Earth, solar flares can give a fatal radiation dose in minutes, and the health threat from cosmic radiation significantly increases the chances of cancer over a decade exposure or more.[27]

In human spaceflight, the life support system is a group of devices that allow a human being to survive in outer space. NASA often uses the phrase Environmental Control and Life Support System or the acronym ECLSS when describing these systems for its human spaceflight missions.[28] The life support system may supply: air, water and food. It must also maintain the correct body temperature, an acceptable pressure on the body and deal with the body's waste products. Shielding against harmful external influences such as radiation and micro-meteorites may also be necessary. Components of the life support system are life-critical, and are designed and constructed using safety engineering techniques.

Space weather is the concept of changing environmental conditions in outer space. It is distinct from the concept of weather within a planetary atmosphere, and deals with phenomena involving ambient plasma, magnetic fields, radiation and other matter in space (generally close to Earth but also in interplanetary, and occasionally interstellar medium). "Space weather describes the conditions in space that affect Earth and its technological systems. Our space weather is a consequence of the behavior of the Sun, the nature of Earth's magnetic field, and our location in the Solar System."[29]

Space weather exerts a profound influence in several areas related to space exploration and development. Changing geomagnetic conditions can induce changes in atmospheric density causing the rapid degradation of spacecraft altitude in Low Earth orbit. Geomagnetic storms due to increased solar activity can potentially blind sensors aboard spacecraft, or interfere with on-board electronics. An understanding of space environmental conditions is also important in designing shielding and life support systems for crewed spacecraft.

Rockets as a class are not inherently grossly polluting. However, some rockets use toxic propellants, and most vehicles use propellants that are not carbon neutral. Many solid rockets have chlorine in the form of perchlorate or other chemicals, and this can cause temporary local holes in the ozone layer. Re-entering spacecraft generate nitrates which also can temporarily impact the ozone layer. Most rockets are made of metals that can have an environmental impact during their construction.

In addition to the atmospheric effects there are effects on the near-Earth space environment. There is the possibility that orbit could become inaccessible for generations due to exponentially increasing space debris caused by spalling of satellites and vehicles (Kessler syndrome). Many launched vehicles today are therefore designed to be re-entered after use.

Current and proposed applications for spaceflight include:

Most early spaceflight development was paid for by governments. However, today major launch markets such as communication satellites and satellite television are purely commercial, though many of the launchers were originally funded by governments.

Private spaceflight is a rapidly developing area: space flight that is not only paid for by corporations or even private individuals, but often provided by private spaceflight companies. These companies often assert that much of the previous high cost of access to space was caused by governmental inefficiencies they can avoid. This assertion can be supported by much lower published launch costs for private space launch vehicles such as Falcon 9 developed with private financing. Lower launch costs and excellent safety will be required for the applications such as space tourism and especially space colonization to become feasible for expansion.

To be spacefaring is to be capable of and active in space travel or space transport, the operation of spacecraft or spaceplanes. It involves a knowledge of a variety of topics and development of specialised skills including: aeronautics; astronautics; programs to train astronauts; space weather and forecasting; ship-handling and small craft handling; operation of various equipment; spacecraft design and construction; atmospheric takeoff and reentry; orbital mechanics (a.k.a. astrodynamics); communications; engines and rockets; execution of evolutions such as towing, micro-gravity construction, and space docking; cargo handling equipment, dangerous cargoes and cargo storage; spacewalking; dealing with emergencies; survival at space and first aid; fire fighting; life support. The degree of knowledge needed within these areas is dependent upon the nature of the work and the type of vessel employed. "Spacefaring" is analogous to seafaring.

There has never been a crewed mission outside the EarthMoon system. However, the United States, Russia, China, European Space Agency countries, and a few corporations and enterprises have plans in various stages to travel to Mars (see Human mission to Mars).

Spacefaring entities can be sovereign states, supranational entities, and private corporations. Spacefaring nations are those capable of independently building and launching craft into space.[30][31][32] A growing number of private entities have become or are becoming space faring. The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs started the first UN space program in 2016.

Currently Russia, the Mainland China, and the United States are the only crewed spacefaring nations.Spacefaring nations listed by year of first crewed launch:

Currently have human spaceflight programs.

Confirmed and dated plans for human spaceflight programs.

Confirmed plans for human spaceflight programs.

Plans for human spaceflight on the simplest form (suborbital spaceflight, etc.).

Plans for human spaceflight on the extreme form (space stations, etc.).

Once had official plans for human spaceflight programs, but have since been abandoned.

The following nations or organizations have developed their own launch vehicles to launch uncrewed spacecraft into orbit either from their own territory or with foreign assistance (date of first launch in parentheses):[33]

Also several countries, such as Canada, Italy and Australia, had semi-independent spacefaring capability, launching locally-built satellites on foreign launchers. Canada had designed and built satellites (Alouette 1 & 2) in 1962 & 1965 which were orbited using US launch vehicles. Italy has designed and built several satellites, as well as pressurized (crewed) modules for the International Space Station. Early Italian satellites were launched using vehicles provided by NASA, first from Wallops Flight Facility in 1964 and then from a spaceport in Kenya (San Marco Platform) between 1967 and 1988;[citation needed] Italy has led the development of the Vega rocket programme within the European Space Agency since 1998.[37]The United Kingdom abandoned its independent space launch programme in 1972 in favour of co-operating with the European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO) on launch technologies until 1974. Australia abandoned its launcher programme shortly after the successful launch of WRESAT, and became the only non-European member of ELDO.

If one considers merely launching an object beyond the Krmn line to be the minimum requirement of spacefaring, then Germany, with the V-2 rocket, became the first spacefaring nation in 1944.[38] The following nations have only achieved suborbital spaceflight capability by launching indigenous rockets and/or missiles into suborbital space.

1. Germany June 20, 1944

2. East Germany April 12, 1957

3. Canada September 5, 1959

4. Lebanon November 21, 1962

5. Switzerland October 27, 1967

6. Argentina April 16, 1969

7. Brazil September 21, 1976

8. Spain February 18, 1981

9. West Germany March 1, 1981

10. Iraq June 1984

11. South Africa June 1, 1989

12. Sweden May 8, 1991

13. Yemen May 12, 1994

14. Pakistan April 6, 1998

15 .Taiwan December 15, 1998

16. Syria September 1, 2000

17. Indonesia September 29, 2004

18. Democratic Republic of the Congo 2007

19. New Zealand November 30, 2009

20. Norway September 27, 2018

21. The Netherlands September 19, 2020[39][40][41][42][43][44][45]

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Spaceflight - Wikipedia

By Lifestyle Reporter 20h ago

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Perhaps the most human trait of all, is the ability to create and in many ways the history of humanity is a timeline of innovation.

The discovery of fire revolutionized human life on earth, the development of the wheel got the world moving faster, and in todays world, travel into space is our new frontier.

As we watch SpaceX begin a fresh exploration into the mystery beyond, its a wonder to learn of just how much the race to space has given birth to the gadgets we now use in our everyday lives.

Child safety seat

It was Swedish engineer Bertil Aldman that came up with a crucial aspect of todays child booster seat; that of positioning it backwards, and Aldman got his inspiration directly from Nasa.

He saw that astronauts of the Gemini Space program were positioned backward in their capsule, a means to limit the effect of acceleration force on them, and immediately knew that the same logic would help protect infants and young children in motor cars.

Its a concept that has gone on to save millions of lives, thanks to Volvo Cars.

Volvo is famous for having invented the three-point safety belt, and so it comes as no surprise that they were responsible for developing Aldmans vision in to the first child safety seat too.

Camera phones

A little known fact is that the first digital camera was built by Eastman Kodak in 1975 (if only they had continued to develop it!) but the actual concept of digital photography has its root in the 1960s, developed by an engineer at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

It was the discoveries of that program that led to the iconic shots of the galaxy, the moon, and even the earth, all of which still inspire us today; and that specific technology which powers one in three camera phones.

The next time you whip out your phone to take a family snap, remember, the tech in your hand was inspired by the stars.

The soles of your running shoes

Most runners wouldnt know it, but since the Apollo era, every weekend jogger and marathon champion has been competing in space shoes.

In the 1960s Nasa developed the "blow rubber molding" process to produce space helmets, which is the same tech used to create the hollows in running shoes that get filled with shock absorbing material.

In fact, it can be said, that without Nasa engineer Frank Rudy, the Nike Air brand would never have seen the light of day.

Baby formula

Its not really so surprising, is it?

Who better than space explorers to discover the best way to turn nutrients into a powder?

Today, many infant formulas rely on a nutrition enrichment process originally devised by Nasa.

The agency began research into the potential for algae to be used as a food recycling agent, which resulted in the creation of an algae-based vegetable oil.

The result became known as Formulaid, which is the bedrock of many baby foods today.

The computer mouse

Potentially the space inspired gizmo most in use the world over today is none other than the mighty computer mouse.

That tiny staple of every laptop and PC was born during the frenzy that was the race to the moon of the 1960s.

Nasa and Stanford researchers were focused on finding an easier way for astronauts to connect with their onboard computers, giving the developed world our most trusty sidekick.

Today space exploration is back in the news.

Virgin Galactic have already sold tourist tickets for space flips, Nokia is installing cell towers on the moon to assist engineers slated for lunar work shifts, and Elon Musk sees Mars as an obvious choice for a new home.

Humanitys speed of innovation is only increasing, making the wave of new gadgets set to join life on earth as fascinating as ever.

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5 everyday gadgets inspired by space travel - IOL

Written by Rebecca Cairns, CNN

Cylindrical steel and glass towers protrude through solar panels on the vast circular roof of the futuristic, four-story Spaceport City.

The spaceport rises from an island that floats in Tokyo Bay, with the skyscrapers of Japan's capital in the background. It's designed to launch tourists on day trips to space, where they will be able to see the building's huge roof -- as well as glimpse the curvature of the Earth and experience zero gravity.

The spaceport will do much more than offer adventurous tourists the trip of a lifetime. It's a day trip destination in itself, with lifestyle and education facilities designed to help earthbound visitors become "more familiar with space" says Urszula Kuczma, project manager at Noiz Architects.

The roof of the spaceport will be covered with solar panels. Credit: Space Port Japan Association, Dentsu, Canaria and Noiz Architects

The mixed-use space includes research and business facilities, an education academy, shops, a hotel, an astronaut-food restaurant, a 4D IMAX movie theatre, an art museum, a gym, an aquarium and a disco -- all space-themed, of course.

To make the spaceport accessible, Noiz Architects' design incorporates public transport with a network of bridges that carry electric cars and autonomous trains, seamlessly integrating the floating island with the city, says Kuczma. The idea, she says, is to stimulate economic opportunities, while inspiring people to explore the possibilities of technology and the wonders of space.

Day trips to space

Unlike the conventional vertical rocket launchers most of us associate with space travel, Spaceport City is designed for suborbital spaceships that look more like planes and take off horizontally.

The spaceport is designed like an airport, for suborbital spacecrafts that take off horizontally like planes. Credit: Space Port Japan Association, Dentsu, Canaria and Noiz Architects

Noiz Architects' plans for Spaceport City include facilities to help space tourists get prepared, says Kuczma. Space travel can be physically and mentally challenging, she says, so health check-ups in the medical clinic and training at the gym or space academy may be part of pre-flight preparations.

Location, location, location

These spaceports have been located near cities to attract space-related businesses and space travelers -- once commercial flights are available.

The four-story spaceport will be multi-purpose: a travel hub as well as an education, entertainment, retail and business center. Credit: Space Port Japan Association, Dentsu, Canaria and Noiz Architects

Tokyo's Spaceport City is designed to showcase the benefits of urban spaceports, to get city dwellers on board with having a spaceport on their doorstep, says Hidetaka Aoki, director of Spaceport Japan.

This kind of spaceflight is still decades off, but Spaceport Japan wants conceptual projects like Spaceport City to lay the groundwork in changing perceptions and "educating" the public about "potential business," says Aoki.

Whether elements of Noiz Architects' design will make it into spaceports of the future remains to be seen -- but the project starts a conversation about what space travel could be like.

Kuczma hopes it will give "people a peek and get them primed for the concept of space as part of the contemporary landscape."

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This floating spaceport in Japan could bring space travel to the city - CNN

It's no shocker when several people loudly threaten to leave the country if an election doesn't go their way. Yet it's hard to go anywhere this year, with a pandemic locking most people in place. Will the time come when we hear promises to bolt the planet?

"Will the election make some people want to leave the planet? Probably. I've already seen some friends on Facebook say so," said Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and author of the new short book America's New Destiny in Space.

According to Reynolds, it won't be too long before people can make good on that threat. Because of the work of SpaceX and other private space exploration companies, the price per kilogram (or per pound) of getting people and materials into space is plummeting like a meteor in the earth's atmosphere.

Previously, it cost about $55,000 to get a single kilogram into orbit. Now, the price has fallen to about $2,700. It is projected to fall further with the next generation of rockets, going down to $270 or lower. As the price falls, many more things become financially possible.

Reynolds's book claims that not only will space travel and habitation become more affordable, it will also be sustainable, meaning the economic activity outside the earth's atmosphere will eventually pay for the ride and the construction of new environments to support humans.

Sean Higgins is a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute with academic training in history. He has some doubts.

"I believe [living in space] will only happen if there is a way to harvest resources like, for example, energy or minerals. Historically, the driving force behind most colonization was the search for resources: Find a place that had something of value, and stake a claim to it, then have people relocate to that place to ensure that the claim holds," Higgins told the Washington Examiner.

"The problem with space is that it is, by definition, empty. It's right there in the word 'space.' So there's not much there to exploit, which is a problem because living in space is itself resource-intensive. Colonizing another planet is theoretically possible, but again, it would have to have a lot of resources to justify the effort," he added.

The extraplanetary economic opportunity that is most often touted is asteroid mining. Some asteroids are known to have deposits of ores and minerals that would make them incredibly valuable, in the trillions of dollars, at current market rates.

Yet Reynolds points out some economic hiccups with harvesting asteroids. It would cost a lot of money to get the equipment there to do that. The resources would still have to be brought back through Earth's punishing atmosphere. And even if the resources could be brought here in large quantities, their value would drop sharply because scarcity is keeping the prices up.

Tim Schumann is an occasional technology investor in the Seattle area. He thinks asteroid mining will not be an incredible gold rush but that it could create new opportunities. "It opens up possibilities to do new and interesting things with metals that used to be prohibitively expensive," he told the Washington Examiner.

Energy is another story. Earth's atmosphere filters out much solar radiation and other cosmic interference. That encourages life here. It also means that solar panels capture far less energy on this planet than they could, unobstructed, up in space. The capture in space and transmission to Earth of large amounts of energy could significantly reduce humanity's future reliance on fossil fuels.

Reynolds, 60, foresees a combination of space tourism, clean energy generation, and resource extraction, creating an economy for significant human habitation outside Earth's atmosphere. Does he see himself living in space in the future?

He said he could see himself living in a controlled environment made possible by what is called an O'Neill cylinder for a time. However, he added, "In a pioneering moon or Mars settlement? I'm probably a little old for that, alas. When I was younger, I would have said yes, and I thought I might even have the chance. Now, it seems likely that I'll visit space, if at all, only as a tourist."

Schumann, in his 30s, is slightly more optimistic about his options to blast off. Asked if he would like to live in space, he joked, "Well, I'd prefer it to dead." He said he thinks he and many peers will likely end up "working in outer space for short periods of time" and that future generations will probably venture further into space and stay longer.

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The future of space travel could include tourism and relocation - Washington Examiner

When astronaut Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev boarded the first pieces of the International Space Station on November 2, 2000, they clasped hands in unison.

"At that moment, we were thinking of the present," Krikalev told NASA in October 2010. But, he added, "subconsciously, we understood that was a certain threshold we were supposed to cross."

Since Expedition 1, the facility's first long-term mission, humans have lived aboard the ISS every second of the next 7,300 days, all while the now-football field-size laboratory has careened around Earth at 17,500 mph.

The station has far outlasted expectations engineers gave it a 15-year life expectancy though its future remains uncertain. NASA thinks the ISS can remain in orbit until 2028 or so, but that depends on whether or not the US and other countries keep funding the project, to the tune of billions per year.

An early version of the Space Station, back when it consisted of just three primary modules, on September 1, 2000. NASA

Private space companies are hoping to build new stations with the help of NASA; some may be way fancier than the current station, or have a lot more room.

But no matter what comes next, engineers and commercial operators will look to the space station as the foundation for all of our future space travel endeavors.

They'll learn from crew members' solutions to common engineering problems, like when one cosmonaut used tea leaves to find a leak in one of the station's main modules. And they could build on ISS research by digging deeper into how to grow fresh produce off-planet, or how the human body reacts to months of microgravity.

Expedition One commander William (Bill) Shepherd in the Zvezda Service module of the International Space Station (ISS) Alpha, May 24, 2011. NASA

Shepherd, a NASA astronaut, has said Expedition-1's first day was "hectic" as the crew prepared to broadcast leaving their spaceship and entering the space station.

"There was kind of a very busy scramble to do the initial things that we had to do and, particularly, to find the TV hook-up and the TV cable," he told AmericaSpace in October 2015. "We were really close to the wire getting all that rigged and happy, and we almost missed it."

The team eventually succeeded in hooking up the equipment, though things never really quieted down: The crew spent more than four months conducting 22 science experiments between piecing the station together. Shepherd likened their mission to "trying to build a house and live in it at the same time."

On that mission, Shepherd, Krikalev and Gidzenko installed the station's solar arrays, which boosted the station's power, plus the $1.4 billion US "Destiny" research module. They also exercised multiple hours a day to stave off bone and muscle loss that can occur in microgravity.

On March 18, 2001, the crew packed up and left after their replacements arrived: Expedition 2 aboard NASA's space shuttle Discovery. But Expedition 1's legacy lives on in the sections they installed, and in hidden surprises, like an aluminum cover for a ventilation duct with a message scrawled on it.

"I wrote on the back of it that this was something that was manufactured by the first expedition, figuring that no one would ever see that," Shepherd said. But in 2014, one of the crews finally found his message.

"There are a few other things hidden away in various parts of the original modules on Space Station that I don't think people have found yet... But some day," he said.

The International Space Station (ISS). NASA

Thanks to nearly 100 crewed missions over its first 20 years, the ISS now boasts dozens of modules, or sections, installed by astronauts and cosmonauts. In all, the flying laboratory now has more livable room than a six-bedroom house.

As it's gotten bigger, ambitions for the station's use have also grown. Most crews now conduct upwards of 200 experiments during a six-month mission a 10-fold increase from two decades ago.

All told, the station has hosted 3,000 science experiments since 2000. Crew members' work has ranged from growing fresh produce in space to studying how living in space affects the human body, an area vital to understand before long-term missions to the moon and Mars begin.

Cosmonaut Maxim Suraev, Expedition 22 flight engineer, holds Mizun lettuce plants from the BIO-5 Rasteniya-2 (Plants-2) experiment in the Service Module during Expedition 20. NASA

In one prominent example, known as the Twin Study, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly spent 340 days aboard the Space Station. His identical twin brother and fellow astronaut, Mark, remained on Earth.

The study found that Scott Kelly's time on the station likely changed his body mass, his bone density, and even the way his genes expressed themselves.

In addition to scientific research, ISS crew members have helped shoot feature films, like the IMAX movie "Space Station." And recently, NASA has ratcheted up commercial activity at the facility. In October, it sent up bottles of Este Lauder skincare product and instructed astronauts to photograph them for a commercial. The agency is also in talks with a production company to make a space-based reality show, called "Space Hero," that would allow one contest-winner to travel to the station and live there for 10 days.

Astronaut Robert L. Curbeam Jr. (left) and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Christer Fuglesang, both STS-116 mission specialists, participate in a spacewalk on December 12, 2006. NASA

The ISS has cost NASA and other space agencies approximately $150 billion to build and operate. And like any large and elaborate home, it needs constant upkeep and repairs; the agency still spends about $3 billion to $4 billion per year so crew members can keep the station in working order.

Sometimes the work takes them outside. To date, crew members have performed at least 231 spacewalks, many to conduct repair work.

Such operations, also called "extravehicular activities," usually require intense concentration and stamina, since they more nakedly expose crew members to the dangers of space. They're also grueling, since the spacesuits, called extravehicular mobility units, weigh about 280 pounds and limit normal human motions.

But they're not all risky tedium: They can also dazzle in rare moments, as retired astronaut Peggy Whitson previously told Business Insider while recounting a moment outside the ISS.

"I could see myself in a space suit, I could see the Earth behind me in the solar arrays, and I was like, 'holy cow, I really am an astronaut!' Because you forget. You're in this moment. You're getting a job done," Whitson said.

"Mixed feelings about International Women's Day: why do we still have 364 mens days a year? Proud to have Peggy Whitson by my side: future 2-time Space Station commander." Thomas Pesquet courtesy of ESA/NASA

Astronaut Terry Virts also experienced his own zen moment during a maintenance procedure. When he had a few moments to rest, he paused outside the station as it orbited 240 miles above the Earth.

"The only sound I heard was the faint, high-pitched whine of the spacesuit fan, and my own breathing, and for a few glorious seconds it was just me and the universe," the retired astronaut wrote in his book "HOW TO ASTRONAUT: An Insider's Guide to Leaving Planet Earth." (Astronauts sometimes describe a powerful "overview effect" from such experiences.)

Russian cosmonaut Sergey Ryazanskiy takes a break during a six-hour spacewalk to help with assembly and maintenance on the International Space Station, August 22, 2013. Johnson Space Center

But, he added, such moments were rare.

"Ninety-nine percent of my time was spent repairing equipment and storing gear and putting grease on bolts and running on a treadmill. And 1% of it was spent hearing from God and seeing creation from a perspective that I'd never thought possible," he wrote.

And even as crew members work around the clock to keep the station in normal working order, unexpected problems arise.

Since 2000, crews onboard the ISS have dealt with more than a dozen moderate to serious maintenance issues, including oxygen generator failures, air leaks, and torn solar panels.

Such problems have become more frequent in recent years, particularly on the station's Russian side where some of the oldest modules reside. The segment has seen a toilet go bust, an oxygen-supply system break down, and an air leak grow larger.

NASA astronaut Serena Aun-Chancellor works on the current US space station toilet. NASA

Crew members found the leak by watching tea leaves float around in microgravity, then patched it with Kapton tape until a more permanent fix can be made.

Such issues are only likely to grow more common as the ISS hurtles into its twilight years.

"All modules of the Russian segment are exhausted," Gennady Padalka, a cosmonaut, told RIANovostion October 15, 2020.

The space station is projected to remain in orbit until at least 2024, though possibly through 2030.

But all good things must come to an end. And when the ISS does, other habitable stations are expected to take its place. Some companies, like Blue Origin, are already working on their own "orbital habitats," which would apparently lay the foundations for a space-based economy of millions of workers.

Others, like Axiom, hope to build new modules that add on to the space station initially, yet later detach to become part of an independent orbital outpost before the world's space agencies retire the ISS into the Pacific Ocean.

An artist's rendering of Axiom's Earth Observatory, a section within its planned International Space Station module. Axiom Space

The Axiom plan is likely to be a welcome development, at least for the current crew aboard the station.

Asked what they think a fitting 20th birthday gift for the ISS would be, all three crew members of Expedition 64, the crew currently living there Kate Rubins, Sergey Ryzhikov, and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov agreed on what they'd want.

"We welcome any and all modules," Rubins said on a recent conference call. "Particularly if they have some stowage space."

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Humans have now lived on the International Space Station for 20 years - Business Insider - Business Insider

A few months ago, amidst Covid, newspapers in West Bengal carried reports about a man who bought an acre of land on Mars. When he brandished the title deed, the media asked whether he planned to spend his honeymoon (he was about to get married) on the red planet. Those who buy a bottle of Laphroaig also get a title deed, with a lease on one square feet of land in Islay. But Islay is terrestrial, Mars is not.

There is indeed a company (perhaps there is more than one) that sells you an acre of land on Mars with a deed registered with the International Association of Human Planetary Exploration (IAOHPE). I havent found anything suggesting this is an authentic organisation. But if there are people gullible enough to pay for this doubtful package (there are standard, deluxe and premium rates) and like the resultant ego trip, why not? It seems to be no different from the idea of purchasing honorary doctorate degrees from places with dubious academic merit.

Anyone who has bought land in India knows that registration of a sale deed does not guarantee ownership or title. But this is an inappropriate analogy. For registering a sale deed, the seller is presumed to possess title. For Mars, or the moon for that matter, there can be no such presumption.While Mars is relatively new, land on the moon has been around for some time, again with deeds registered by IAOHPE, or without it. Sushant Singh Rajput was only one example. There was the German who claimed Frederick the Great gave his ancestor the moon. Interplanetary Development Corporation and Lunar Embassy Commission hawked lunar real estate.

Every science fiction connoisseur will remember Robert Heinleins 1949 novella, The Man who Sold the Moon. That man was a businessman named Delos David Harriman. At the time, at least in fiction, Heinlein invoked a legal maxim that has gone through extremely interesting evolution in jurisprudence. This fancy sounding Latin (law always becomes more impressive when Latin is used) maxim is, Cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos, abbreviated more simply as the ad coelum doctrine.

In plain English, a person who owns a plot of land not only has rights to the land, but also to the air above and subsurface below the land. In the novella, using this principle, Harriman persuades the United Nations to grant his company rights to the moon. With air travel (the change started with balloon flights) and now space travel, ad coelum has become circumscribed. No infinitely above and infinitely below. There are limits.

On specifics of rights on the moon, Mars and asteroids, there is an Outer Space Treaty (OST, 1967) and this covers the moon and other celestial bodies. Most countries have signed this, though some have signed, but have not yet ratified it. Article II of this Treaty seems clear enough, at least in intent. Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means. All law (and legislation) is overtaken by events, just as the ad coelum doctrine eventually had to be modified.

The world in 2020 is different from that in 1967. Other than in the realm of science fiction, who would have imagined in 1967 that private companies would venture into space, or that chicken nuggets would float around in space? The likes of IAOHPE can argue that Article II applies only to sovereign states, not individual parties. If there is such a legal case, I suspect Article VI of the OST is sufficient to settle matters. States Parties to the Treaty shall bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, whether such activities are carried on by governmental agencies or by non-governmental entities, and for assuring that national activities are carried out in conformity with the provisions set forth in the present Treaty.

The activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorisation and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty. The problem with the Treaty is elsewhere. Reflecting the vintage, the OST is primarily about peaceful space exploration and limiting the Cold War in space. It didnt anticipate property rights in space. As with land, property rights are a bundle of rights.

Ownership is only one element. Delinking from ownership, what about mining extra-terrestrial resources? There have been add-ons to the OST, such as on return of objects from space (astronauts included), international registration and liability for objects launched and limitations on what governments can do on celestial bodies. India is a party to these. But these dont address the core issue of exploitation of resources, not always by governments, but also private companies. UN treaties are often honoured in the breach.

In any event, such a new treaty under the UN umbrella is unlikely. If the US can enact national legislation in 2015 (Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, one should read what this says about space resource exploration and utilisation), why shouldnt India? We have a space programme and private entry has recently been allowed into these. However, Indian National Space Promotion andAuthorisation Centre (In-Space), New Space India Ltd (NSIL) and Antrix Corporation require legislative backing on commercial exploitation of resources too, even if this conflicts with prior positions India adopted.

Bibek debroyChairman, Economic Advisory Council to the PM (Tweets @bibekdebroy)

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Who can own property on the moon and mars? - The New Indian Express

Ultra Safe Nuclear Technologies, a Seattle, Washington-based company, reported they had sent NASA a concept design for nuclear thermal propulsion engine. As part of a study on space flight, they designed a NTP with the aim of getting Mars in just three months for future space travel missions. It comes after NASA officials have said nuclear-powered systems will be required for further exploration into space.

NTP systems use nuclear fission, power from splitting atoms, to create thrust, and are generally more efficient than existing chemical rockets.

Michael Eades, principal engineer at USNC-Tech, issued a statement on the companys nuclear engine, touting it as even more reliable than other designs.

He also claimed the companys NTP design has a specific impulse, referring to the amount of thrust from a propellant, more than twice that of chemical systems."

Mr Eades added: We want to lead the effort to open new frontiers in space, and do it quickly and safely.

READ MORE:SpaceX news: Elon Musk's firm aiming to provide internet to first residents of Mars

NTP systems have been looked at as promising ways to slash space travel time with heavier payloads than modern advanced rockets.

Experts believe the systems will be able to halve the travel time to Mars, which is currently held to be seven months one way.

Paolo Venneri, UNSC-Tech CEO, has claimed their design uses nuclear design aspects from reactor, and added: Key to USNC-Tech's design is a conscious overlap between terrestrial and space reactor technologies.

"This allows us to leverage the advancements in nuclear technology and infrastructure from terrestrial systems and apply them to our space reactors."

The proposal followed NASA scientists and engineers admitting nuclear-powered engines were the next big step forward for space travel.

Former NASA administrator Daniel Goldin recently argued "it's time to grow up" and go nuclear for future space exploration missions.

In a statement, NASA said adopting NTP would save the company millions, and added: What if it costs less, carries more, and uses less fuel? This radical system is in-space electric propulsion.

"It can reduce the amount of fuel, or propellant, needed by up to 90 percent compared to chemical propulsion systems, saving millions in launch costs while providing greater missions flexibility."

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It also follows companies eyeing up ways to make interplanetary travel more of a reality in the near-future.

Elon Musks SpaceX have touted their Starship rocket as almost ready to start travelling to Mars.

Mr Musk, CEO of the company, said in a conversation with Mars Society founder Robert Zubrin that SpaceX is on track to begin its first unmanned mission to Mars within four years time.

He added, referring to a once-every-26-month period: "I think we have a fighting chance of making that second Mars transfer window.

An expert has also warned NASA are being challenge by China over being the dominant space power.

Dr Malcolm Davis, Senior Analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, toldExpress.co.uk: The Chinese have made it very clear they intend to be a comprehensive space power, certainly by 2049. That is in their official statements.

I think they're probably moving faster than that to try and achieve that goal.

So we'll see how they go about that. It's not just the military side of things there, its also the civil and commercial side of things.

Originally posted here:

NASA breakthrough: Humans could travel to Mars in HALF the time after major development - Daily Express

The witching hour is upon us.

Maybe ghosts, ghouls and superheroes wont fill the streets this year, but the coronavirus pandemic cant take all the fun out of Halloween.

While the coronavirus pandemic never got as bad as the horror classic Dawn of the Dead, heading to the mall was a spooky proposition a few months ago. Now that masks and social distancing protocols are the norm, shoppers are starting to head back to the register.

Thats good news for the Florida Retail Federation, which is expecting Halloween to do wonders for stores across the state according to a consumer survey conducted by the National Retail Federation, Halloween spending is expected to cross the $8 billion mark this year. While thats a significant dip from last year, its not as bad as once feared.

When FRF needs help in the Legislature, they turn to French Brown of Dean Mead, Jon Johnson and Darrick McGee of Johnson & Blanton, and their in-house team of R. Scott Shalley, Jake Farmer, Lorena Holley and Grace Lovell.

After making the trip to Wal-Mart or Target to grab some garb for the kiddos and something sweet, theres the question of what to do with the rest of the night.

In a normal year, Halloween falling on a Saturday would mean plenty of options parties for adults, Halloween Horror Nights for the tourist crowd and of course trick-or-treating for kids without fear of missing bedtime on a school night.

Universal Studios might be seen as a little brother to Disney for most of the year, but not in October. Unfortunately, their monthlong Halloween bash was scrubbed this year, but the Horror Nights spirit lives in in a scaled-down celebration.

The theme park has set up a pair of haunted houses, one is themed after the 1935 film The Bride of Frankenstein Lives and the other is titled Revenge of the Tooth Fairy dentophobics be warned, this one flips the tooth fairy mythos on its head.

Just as horror fans rely on Universal for scares, the tourism juggernaut relies on a talented team of lobbyists to advance its priorities in Tallahassee. The current roster: Brett Bacot, Jim Magill and Kimberly McGlynn of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney; Will McKinley, Angela Dempsey, Fred Dickinson, Erik Kirk and Sophie Smith of PooleMcKinley; Missy Timmins of Timmins Consulting; and in-houser Melanie Becker.

As for trick-or-treating and partying the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention placed both on the high-risk list. Its for the greater good, of course, but its no less disappointing than getting a tube of toothpaste at the door. Still, there a few places for kids to safely sport their costumes.

Down in the Glades area, U.S. Sugar has teamed up with the cities of Moore Haven, LaBelle, Clewiston, Belle Glade, and Indiantown to make sure trick-or-treaters dont go home empty-handed Saturday night. The events range from drive-in candy pickups to socially distanced, mask required haunted houses.

U.S. Sugars is among Floridas biggest businesses and, accordingly, they have many of the big-name lobbyists at the biggest firms on retainer.

The list includes Brian Ballard and Chris Dorworth of Ballard Partners; Gregory Black of Waypoint Strategies; Carlos Cruz of Converge Government Affairs; Charlie Dudley and Cory Guzzo of Floridian Partners; Mercer Fearington, Seth McKeel, Sydney Ridley and Clark Smith of The Southern Group; Richard Heffley and Kelly Horton of Heffley & Associates; Frank Mayernick and Tracy Mayernick of The Mayernick Group; Kirk Pepper of GrayRobinson; Christopher Smith of Tripp Scott PA; and Screven Watson of Screven Watson & Associates.

With few knocks at the door and limited party options, many of us will be flipping through channels or, more likely, streaming services looking for a festive film.

Sunshine State cinema savants can pocket this piece of trivia: Creature from the Black Lagoon was shot in Florida more specifically, Silver Springs, Wakulla Springs and Jax. The definitive deep ones film went on to be considered a classic, but theres been few other Fresh from Florida films to be so honored in the 65 years since it bowed.

If Film Florida gets its way, that could change. The trade association has been fighting for years to lure film productions back to Florida, most recently through an innovative grant model. It hasnt squeaked through the Legislature yet, but the proposal has definitely gained traction among influential lawmakers such as Sen. Joe Gruters.

The renewed interest is thanks in part to the lobbying efforts of Al Cardenas, Slater Bayliss, Chris Chaney, Stephen Shiver and Sarah Busk Suskey of The Advocacy Group at Cardenas Partners.

Of course, not everyone is into creature features. For those that want a little Sci-Fi mixed in, all-time greats such as It Came from Outer Space, Alien and The Thing are always good picks for a reliable fright. Space travel is in vogue right now, and the premier name in the business is shooting rockets from the Space Coast to the stars.

Elon Musks SpaceX (or Space Exploration Technologies for the long winded) brought joy to people the world over early on in the pandemic when it launched a Falcon9 into orbit from Kennedy Space Center. That rocket carried two astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA.

While the mission was a success, SpaceXs team of rocket scientists know their limits. Thats why the company turns to Jeff Sharkey andTaylor Biehl of Capital Alliance Group to bring its priorities in for a safe landing at the Capitol.

Back on terra firma, theres another tech revolution in its nascent phase: Self-driving cars. And unlike the nightmare-inducing Maximum Overdrive, the new-fangled innovation is apparently safe enough for Sen. Jeff Brandes to hop in the non-driver seat.

Musks Tesla Motors is one of the companies making waves in autonomous vehicles, but theres a truckload more looking to boost their presence in Florida, Starsky Robotics and Google (via Waymo) among them. But until the programming geniuses behind AVs find a way to automate the Legislature, theyll be in need of some backup in Tallahassee.

For Starsky, those duties have been farmed out to Cesar Fernandez, Jonathan Kilman, Paul Lowell and Brad Nail of Converge Government Affairs while Waymo has Rhett ODoski, Sara Clements, Ryder Rudd and Sean Stafford of McGuireWoods Consulting in the drivers seat.

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Halloween is brought to you by these Florida lobbyists and political associations - Florida Politics

Water has been definitively found on the Moon, Nasa has said, and there are a set of water traps that could hold it stably.

The research suggests that water could be distributed right across the lunar surface, not just trapped in the cold, shadowed parts of the Moon.

The discovery is a major breakthrough in the mission to explore the rest of the solar system, as well as giving a better understanding of the lunar surface.

It also raises new questions about how exactly the water got there, and how it is able to survive the harsh conditions on the Moon.

It could, for instance, be trapped in glass beads on the surface that form when micrometeorites crash into the Moon and melt a part of the lunar surface, either forming water or capturing it in the beads as it does.

Scientists had previously thought that any water on the sunlit side of the Moon would immediately be lost. But it appears that it is in fact present, and not just on the parts that are shaded from the sun.

Nasa was keen to stress that the amount of water is very limited, with the new discovery representing only around one per cent of the amount of water found in the Sahara desert. But even that very small amount of water was not previously confirmed to exist, and it remains unclear how it could be created or stay on the surface.

Researchers had previously found evidence of hydration on the lunar surface. But it was unclear whether that hydrogen was in the form of hydroxyl the chemical that makes up drain cleaners or in the form of H2O, or water.

Now scientists have found unambiguously that there is a water on the surface.

We had indications that H2O the familiar water we know might be present on the sunlit side of the Moon, said Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Now we know it is there. This discovery challenges our understanding of the lunar surface and raises intriguing questions about resources relevant for deep space exploration.

That could be used for humans who travel to the Moon and create a permanent lunar base there, as Nasa hopes to. It could also help create fuel to travel elsewhere in the solar system.

Nasa hopes to head to the Moon in 2024, taking the first person in more than 50 years and the first woman ever to step foot on the lunar surface. By the end of the decade, it wants to have established a sustainable human presence on the Moon.

Water is critical for exploring space: not just as a fuel or drinking, but it can also be turned into oxygen to breathe. But it is heavy, and therefore very expensive to be carried into space on a rocket, and so finding it on the Moon could make space travel significantly cheaper and easier.

Water is a valuable resource, for both scientific purposes and for use by our explorers, said Jacob Bleacher, chief exploration scientist for NASAs Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.

If we can use the resources at the Moon, then we can carry less water and more equipment to help enable new scientific discoveries.

Scientists still dont know exactly where the water is being stored on the Moon, or if it can be used at all. They said the new discovery is just the beginning of future research that will involve exploring the state and location of the water on the surface.

Without a thick atmosphere, water on the sunlit lunar surface should just be lost to space, said Casey Honniball, the lead author, who published the results from her graduate thesis work at the University of Hawaii at Mnoa in Honolulu. Yet somehow were seeing it. Something is generating the water, and something must be trapping it there.

Researchers suggest that in some cases tiny patches of ice might exist in permanent shadows no bigger than a penny.

They explored phenomena on the moon called cold traps, which are shadowy regions of the surface that exist in a state of eternal darkness.

It is thought that many have gone without a single ray of sunlight for potentially billions of years.

Now scientists say there may be a lot more of these nooks and crannies than previous data suggests.

Paul Hayne, assistant professor in the laboratory of atmospheric and space physics at University of Colorado Boulder, said: "If you can imagine standing on the surface of the moon near one of its poles, you would see shadows all over the place.

"Many of those tiny shadows could be full of ice."

Drawing on detailed data from Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the researchers estimate the moon could harbour roughly 15,000 square miles of permanent shadows in various shapes and sizes.

According to scientists, these might be reservoirs capable of preserving water via ice.

Prof Hayne added: "If we're right, water is going to be more accessible for drinking water, for rocket fuel, everything that Nasa needs water for."

In one of two papers published in Nature Astronomy, Casey Honniball, from the University of Hawaii, and colleagues analysed data from the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (Sofia) airborne telescope that observed the moon at six micrometres.

At this wavelength, they were able to detect a spectral signature of water that is not shared with other hydroxyl compounds.

They found water is present at high southern latitudes.

The observations arose from something of a test observation, to see whether Sofia could examine the Moon. The flying observatory is usually used to look deeper into space, and it was not clear that it could even see the lunar surface properly since it is so close and bright.

It was, in fact, the first time SOFIA has looked at the Moon, and we werent even completely sure if we would get reliable data, but questions about the Moons water compelled us to try, said Naseem Rangwala, SOFIAs project scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, in a statement.

Its incredible that this discovery came out of what was essentially a test, and now that we know we can do this, were planning more flights to do more observations.

In the other study, Prof Hayne assessed a whole range of possible sizes for cold traps, down to one centimetre in diameter.

The team found that small-scale micro cold traps - some just 1cm wide - are hundreds to thousands of times more numerous than larger cold traps, and they can be found at both poles.

The authors suggest that approximately 40,000 square km of the lunar surface has the capacity to trap water.

Researchers say the findings indicate water is efficiently produced or delivered on the moon by various processes, and is likely to be stored in the moon's cold traps at both polar region.

The team pulled data from real-life observations of the moon, then used mathematical tools to recreate what its surface might look like at a very small scale.

They say it is a bit like a golf ball.

However the researchers caution that they cannot prove these shadows actually hold pockets of ice, and the only way to do that would be to go there in person or with rovers and dig.

But they say the results are promising, and future missions could shed even more light on the moon's water resources.

Prof Hayne said: "Astronauts may not need to go into these deep, dark shadows.

"They could walk around and find one that's a metre wide and that might be just as likely to harbour ice."

Additional reporting by Press Association

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Nasa reveals that there is water on the moon in breakthrough that could lead to deep-space travel - The Independent

If its your birthday today Those in a relationship may feel slightly confused about it, but avoid giving an ultimatum about it. Buying property is an option. Negotiations for new business/contracts/deals/projects bring results much quicker than last year. Professionally you are in a better space. Travel for work/business is possible after December, but it depends entirely on how you feel about it. Do follow a healthy diet.

Capricorn: One potential client/contract looks a little undecided right now; but carry on with alternate plans without undue waste of time. Love msg: An important milestone is celebrated. Colours: grey/blue.

Taurus: Make sure creative goals can be translated to a success story. Financial advantages are revealed due to some investments made last year. Love msg: Singles enter the marriage dasha. Colours: maroon/yellow.

Aquarius: Be very aware of body language and not sending the wrong signals. Do follow a healthy diet. Love msg: A relationship is in a state of flux and change. Colours: brown/beige.

Gemini: A karmic cycle of selling property begins. A better financial time begins too. Do get enough sleep. Love msg: Your actual feelings come as a surprise to someone special. Colours: tan/purple.

Libra: Optimism and acceptance of what there is in life makes it sweeter. Life is good. Love msg: This is a time of making conscious and well thought out choices. Colours: brown/grey.

Pisces: Both of you feel responsible and know important issues need to be addressed and sorted out. Health is good. Love msg: A turn for the better in a relationship. Colours: black/khaki.

Cancer: Some decide on refurnishing the home or office. A cycle of changes ensures happiness and career/business in a forward movement. Love msg: A period of emotional turmoil ends. Colours: green/black.

Scorpio: Wanting to end a business partnership should be thought out in detail before deciding what to do. Love msg: Relatives and friends may wonder why you are being so secretive. Colours: red/grey.

Aries: A karmic cycle for acquiring or selling immovable assets begins. Health is good. Love msg: A karmic cycle for some involves a chance meeting with someone from the past. Colours: pink/lavender.

Leo: Helping a friend through a tough time has taught you many lessons through second hand experience. Do get enough sleep. Love msg: Reach for happiness by following your heart. Colours: orange/red.

Sagittarius: The boss is quite co-operative and appreciative about certain ideas discussed with you. A slow moving day. Love msg: Singles meet someone they have admired for quite a while. Colours: khaki/pink.

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Horoscope today: Here are the astrological predictions for October 31 - Mumbai Mirror

Fast & Furious 10 & 11 are set to be the concluding chapters of the franchise - here's what they need to do to bring it all to a close.

The Fast and Furious series is set to conclude with its 11th film, but the franchise will need to tie up a few loose ends before it wraps up. As moviegoers await the chance the se the upcoming F9, delayed to May 2021 from May of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Fast and Furious series is still growing. The franchise has spanned an astonishing two decades from its modest beginnings in 2001's The Fast and the Furious. The journey in that time has been one for the record books, going from street racing action movies that were moderate hits in their time to the biggest action movie franchise on the planet.

The series has also undergoneamind-boggling metamorphosis, slowly phasing out the Earth-bound stakes it once occupied to now sitting on a similar plane as superhero movies. A run like that is enviable by any measure, andnews recently brokethat the 10th and 11th chapters of the series will be its last. Given what a monumental tentpole the franchise has become for Universal Pictures, one certainly couldn't be faulted for viewing such a claim with skepticism. There's also a pretty fair chance that this falls in the "Yes and No" category, with theprimaryFast and Furious series indeed coming to end after number 11, while the larger franchise continues to live on through spin-offs such as Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw and Netflix's Fast and Furious: Spy Racers animated series.

RELATED: Fast & Furious Tokyo Drift IS Now One Of The Franchises Most Important Movies

In any case, the 10th and 11thFast and Furiousmoviescannot truly end the series without addressing a number of key issues pertaining to its story and characters. The increasingly outrageous territory the franchise has expanded into also presents it with an opening to do a few things that would have been bafflingly absurd when it first began, but which now fit right in with the kind of gloriously unhinged thrill ride that the series has come to embody. Here is what Fast and Furious 10 and 11 need to do in order to give the series the finale that it deserves.

The most obvious, and the most called for, resolution of the Fast Saga is in the promise of justice being done for Han's attempted murder by Deckard Shaw. Han was supposedly killed by Shaw in bothFast and Furious: Tokyo Drift and Furious 7due to their overlapping timelines, only for the trailer for F9 to reveal Han alive and well in the present day and returning to Dom's crew. This opens a whole can of worms on its own with how Han survived the explosion of his car and where he's been all this time, though the series easily skirted that exact complication with Letty's return after her own supposed death in Fast and Furious 6. More importantly, there's also a lot of water under the bridge that is Shaw's attack on Dom's family in Furious 7.

The Fate of the Furiouscasually retconned Shaw from a villain into an outright hero, even inducting him into Dom's inner circle, and by Hobbs and Shaw, the only narrative link to prior assault on Dom and company was he and Hobbs continuing to butt heads more out of egos than a true grudge. From his own perspective, Shaw was acting in retaliation for his brother Owen Shaw's near-death from his battle with Dom's family in Fast and Furious 6, only for everyone (Owen included) to set that aside when it became clear they shared a common enemy in Cipher in The Fate of the Furious.

Though Shaw isn't appearing in F9, his return to the mainline series is assured, and it would be horrendously negligent to not directly address his attempt to kill Han. A face-to-face encounter goes without saying, and perhaps even a physical altercation does too, its doubtless Hanwill refuse to trust Shaw. TheFast Sagafound its own way for Hobbs to bury the hatchet with Shaw over his previous attempt to kill him, and however it goes about doing so, it has to extend some form of justice to Han, as well.

Of course, with Han returning, there's no reason why other characters can't, and it would actually be a huge missed opportunity if the last chapters of the Fast and Furious series didn't pull in everyone that they possibly could. Given that Han is back, the return of his girlfriend Gisele Yashar is right at the top of the list, all the more so for Gal Gadot's Wonder Womanprestige. Though Gisele seemingly died herself in Fast and Furious 6, Han's return itself is really the biggest argumentfor Gisele to also jump back in.

Eva Mendes returning as Monica Fuentes would be a lot trickier, given Mendes having essentially retired from acting, but if she were to show any interest incoming back for even a cameo, Monica's return would certainly expand the ensemble of the franchise's finale. Johnny Strong's Leon was also one of the more minor associates of Dom and his crew, but bringing him back in some capacity would also be a wise choice as the series comes to an end, and the same would be the case for Lucas Black's Sean Boswell from Tokyo Drift, as well as Tego Calderon and Don Omar as Leo and Santos from Fast Five (bringing back Dwayne Johnson as Luke Hobbs also goes without saying.) One thing's for sure - in a series predicated on the idea of family, the last two Fast and Furious movies should bring back every retired character that it possibly can.

RELATED: Dom vs. Brian: Who The Best Driver In Fast & Furious Really Is

At a glance, the notion of time-travel in a Fast and Furious movie sounds ridiculous, but realistically, should it? Few movie franchises have undergone such a radical facelift as the Fast and Furious series has, beginning as a pretty transparent Point Break knock-off to Dom BASE-jumping a car from one skyscraper to another in Furious 7. Once the series hit its stride in Fast Five, half of the fun of each new chapter has been in how each can be more over-the-top than the last, and sci-fi elements are also now firmly embedded into the franchise with Hobbs and Shaw's cybernetically augmented villain Brixton Lore and the Eteon organization. The point is, the Fast Saga abandoned any pretense of being a grounded action movie series long ago.

There's also the fact that F9 is now set to take the series into space, and while that feels perfectly fitting for just what the franchise is now, that also makes a hard to imagine just what the 10th and 11th installments can do to one-up it. After bringing space travel into the mix, time-travel is very possibly the only thing left for the series to dive into that can take it into even more outlandish territory. It could even make the concluding chapters of the series a kind of Avengers: Infinity War/Avengers: Endgamesituation, and bringing the whole story full circle in what is now the true Fast and Furious style. Time-travel might be jumping the shark for The Expendables or John Wick, but in a franchise that has gradually transitioned from street racing to space travel and essentially shrugged while doing it, it's justthe nextlogical frontier.

Going back to the family aspect of the franchise, that certainly needs to be central to how Fast and Furious 10 and 11 close the curtain on the series. With Han returning, that throws the door wide open for a whole slew of characters to come back into the mix, andthis could turn the final installments of the franchise into a kind of family reunion, literally and thematically. Moreover, as the central pillar of the whole series, the biggest question of all is how Dom's story should wrap up.

Considering how long the series has lasted, and done so against all odds and expectations, a final street race or scene of Dom riding off into the sunset would be fitting. At the same time,Dom going out in a blaze of glory might be the most fulfilling way to conclude his story. Tying into the family theme that the series is renown for, Dom would certainly be far from reluctant to lay down his life for the sake of anyone in his crew, so perhaps a final showdown in which Dom, armed with a pair of torque wrenches, no doubt, makes the ultimate sacrifice for his family would be the best way to finally conclude the legend of Dominic Toretto.

That the Fast and Furious series continued long enough to hit their groove with Fast Five and rise to where it is now is an astonishing accomplishment, and its ending will surely be an emotional farewell for audiences, even if it's likely to continue in some form through spin-offs and whatnot. However the book ends up being closed on the series, there are a number of beats that it should hit, a few that it absolutely has to, and a few plot elements that are simply a logical extension of the wild vehicular adventure it's transitioned into. The Fast and Furious series always lived its life a quarter-mile at a time, and the only proper way for it to conclude is for it to end that way.

NEXT: Fast & Furious: Everything That Happened To Dom That The Movies Didn't Show

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WandaVision Adds Orange Is The New Black Cast Member

Growing up, Brad developed an innate love of movies and storytelling, and was instantly enamored with the world of adventure while following the exploits of Indiana Jones, Japanese kaiju, and superheroes. Today, Brad channels his thoughts on all manner of movies, from comic book films, sci-fi thrillers, comedies, and everything in between through his writings on Screen Rant. Brad also offers philosophical musings on martial arts and the filmographies of everyone from Jackie Chan to Donnie Yen on Kung Fu Kingdom, where he's also had the privilege of interviewing many of the world's great stunt professionals, and hearing plenty of gripping stories on injuries incurred in their line of work and the intricacies of designing the acts of death defiance he first thrilled to as a youngster. When he's not writing, Brad enjoys going on a ride with the latest action hit or Netflix original, though he's also known to just pop in "The Room" from time to time. Follow Brad on Twitter @BradCurran.

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What Fast & Furious 10 & 11 Need To Do To Properly End The Fast Saga - Screen Rant

When it comes to video games portraying the atmosphere and tone of its film influences, Alien: Isolation is in a class of its own. Translating the Alien film series into a unique horror game focused on persistent terror as opposed to fleeting cheap thrills, this survival horror experience channels a sense of dread and slow-burn tension that forces players to respect the very thing that stalks them. Though its reception at launch was met with some polarizing responses--including from GameSpot's former reviews editor Kevin VanOrd--and along with modest sales, this comparatively unorthodox take on the Alien franchise became a favorite in the years since its release--even prompting fans to make an unofficial VR mod to amp up the scares.

On the sixth anniversary of its release and in time for Halloween 2020, GameSpot is taking a look back at Creative Assembly's uncompromising horror game, and how it made players to learn to fear the Xenomorph once again.

Right from outset, Alien: Isolation sets the tone for what players can expect. Its eerie 1977-era 20th Century Fox fanfare opening is a throwback to the beginnings of the Alien franchise. Creative Assembly wears its reverence for the source material on its sleeves, reveling in the iconic 70s retro-futurism that defined the movies. In the game, the nostalgia of it is alluring, but Isolation does more than pay its source material lip-service, it builds on and presents a story of its own that both fits into and enhances the movies.

Gallery

Ridley Scott's 1979 film is still regarded as one of the most influential and powerful horror films ever. Channeling elements of slasher films and science fiction, the crew of the Nostromo stumble upon a strange alien life-form of Lovecraftian cosmic horror, quickly spiraling out into a fight for survival. Despite their reliance on futuristic, yet run-down technology capable of interstellar space travel, the film was very much a humbling experience for its characters. For survival horror, this feeling of vulnerability and perilousness is an especially vital pillar of the genre--which Alien: Isolation ratchets up considerably throughout.

Initially developed as a third-person stealth action game with an in-depth cover system, the developers at Creative Assembly soon shifted to first-person to have a more intimate feel. Along with this, it introduced design tenets from the immersive-sim sub-genre--a la Dishonored and BioShock--and leaned on the tension and gameplay of classic survival horror games. Set 15 years after the Nostromo's destruction, Alien: Isolation brings Ellen Ripley's daughter Amanda to the Space Station Sevastopol to uncover clues behind her mother's disappearance. But of course, an alien organism is already onboard, unleashing a seemingly unstoppable creature focused entirely on picking off members of the space station one by one.

Unlike the bombast of movie's sequels, the game stays true to the first movie's subdued, disquieting feel. Aside from the flamethrower, firearms are the least useful of tools at the player's disposal, as the Alien is invulnerable to bullets, and is always lurking in the vents and tunnels of the station. Alien: Isolation is a re-examination of what horror and the fragility of character is in gaming, hammering the notion that you're trapped, and with no way out.

Video games as a medium have quite a history of boiling complex, highly-intelligent apex predators into a moving target for players to unload bullets into. This is especially true for how the Alien series has evolved in the gaming medium, with most of these games revolving around shooting swarms of Xenomorphs with smart-guns, pulse-rifles--and even with the Predator making an appearance. Because of this, the Alien creature became the quintessential video game cannon-fodder. However, Isolation was cold and cruel in showing players how futile this approach was, instead forcing players to relearn their relationship to the Xenomorph and, ultimately, respect it. While your goals and destination are mostly one-note, Isolation allows players to come up with their own solutions, either from sacrificing resources to craft new items, or by making a bold move to take advantage of nearby enemies as a distraction to make a quick getaway.

With a focus on staying on top of your resources, avoiding enemy encounters when possible, and a static save system that makes simply recording your progress a risk in itself--the main hook of Isolation's design is making players constantly aware of how vulnerable they are. Coming a year after the lackluster and uninspired action-horror game Aliens: Colonial Marines, the developers at Creative Assembly distinguished their Alien game with authenticity. Alien: Isolation, in many ways, relishes in subverting expectations; whether that's making players the prey instead of the predator, or giving players conditioned to expect a shooter something entirely different.

Though Isolation's lead character comes from one of the sequel's deleted scenes, Isolation benefits from extrapolating out what made the original movie memorable. In addition to Amanda, however, are an assortment of side-characters that can be played as in the Survival mode, offering their side of the story on the Sevastopol. As a ramshackle space station falling apart, populated with knock-off Working Joes androids that couldn't be sold off due to how creepy and off-putting they look, the setting feels like a haunted house floating in the cold depths of space. And to make matters worse--there's a high-intelligent, merciless killer lurking about.

Alien: Isolation saw its release in a particularly interesting year for horror gaming. The genre had gone through a rather surprising upswing with notable releases from independent developers like Five Nights at Freddy's, to some more larger scale releases like the enigmatic P.T--the teaser for the now dead Silent Hills. What these games have in common with Alien: Isolation was that they forced players into a position of disempowerment, either keeping them in a specific location, or tasking them with making to it one location from another, while avoiding the gaze of the antagonist.

With the survival horror genre, much of the experience is about humbling the player and getting them to feel the sense of uncertainty that looms throughout their trek. Alien: Isolation isn't about the big victories of taking down bosses over the course of several hours, but rather the smaller victories scattered throughout; slinking back into the shadows as the Xenomorph enters the room, narrowly avoiding certain death, or managing to grab an item of a desk in the same room as a Working Joe. Broadly speaking, Alien: Isolation spends 12-15 hours ratcheting up the tension when needed, and then gradually loosening it up. But in the midst of it all, the ever-present threat of the Xenomorph feels like the touch of fingertips on your neck, threatening to choke the life out of you at a moment's notice. Its delicate cycling of tension feels more like a constant chokehold.

While Creative Assembly and Sega may never make a game like Isolation again, it will be remembered for its bold, brave inventive realisation of the Alien franchise's potential. It understood what the property was capable of beyond the shooting galleries and recycling of cheesy one-liners. Alien: Isolation stands as a remarkable achievement for its re-examination and re-invigoration of the horror experience in gaming, and is likely one of the best things to happen to the Alien franchise in a long time.

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Alien: Isolation Is Still An Unmatched Horror Experience - GameSpot

Anyone familiar with cable television programs knows that Americans love the occult. Series like Ancient Aliens, Finding Bigfoot, Haunted History, MonsterQuest and Most Terrifying Places in America are more popular than shows about Adolf Hitler, real housewives or tiger kings. The fact that the objects of the search are never found does not matter. Ghosts, space aliens and monsters continue to dominate our imagination, whether they are real or not.

As a lifelong student of the occult, I admit that shows about ghosts, space aliens and monsters are a guilty pleasure of mine, along with DC Comics and chips n salsa. This does not mean that I believe in them. Take ghosts for instance. Many people believe that death is not the end, and that a persons soul or spirit travels to another realm after their bodys demise. (Here I am an agnostic, though I hope the believers are right.) From that comes the belief that many souls, whose bodies died abruptly or violently, remain at or near the site of their deaths, seeking closure. Though I do not believe in ghosts, I know some people who do. In fact, I once had a roommate who claimed that the ghost of my late partner, Michael Greenspan, haunted his bedroom. I investigated the matter, found nothing amiss, and threw out my roommate.

Still, I enjoy watching programs where ghost hunters investigate haunted houses in search of a presence.

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Space aliens, or unidentified flying objects (UFOs), have stirred our imagination since the 1940s. They are not as farfetched as they seem. We could argue that, in a universe that is as vast as ours, intelligent life is not limited to our planet Earth. We could further argue that, if there is intelligent life elsewhere, those beings could have developed a form of space travel that is more advanced than ours. Furthermore, if their curiosity is as advanced as their technology, it is not inconceivable for them to have visited us, if only to see what is going on around here. This does not mean that space aliens came over in ancient times and helped us built the Pyramids in Egypt or Machu Picchu in Peru, no matter what Chariots of the Gods or its television offspring, Ancient Aliens, might say.

The dictionary defines cryptozoology as the search for and study of animals whose existence or survival is disputed or unsubstantiated. Todays cryptozoology might be tomorrows hard science as new species are discovered every year. Still, some cryptids existence remains in doubt. If such creatures are large or deadly, we call them monsters, and here our fascination is tinged with fear. The most famous of these monsters are the Bigfoot or Sasquatch of North America, along with their Asian cousins, the Yeti. In this case I am a believer. Though I have never seen a Sasquatch, I do not doubt that a population of giant apes, descended from Gigantopithecus, roams the forests of the Pacific Northwest and, perhaps, other places. On the other hand, no science is as fraught with hoax as the study of Sasquatch. Many so-called Bigfoot sightings turn out to be bears, men in ghillie suits or figments of someones imagination. Sadly, no photo or video of a Sasquatch is clear or conclusive, even the famous Patterson-Gimlin film (1967). Only the capture of a Sasquatchs body, living or dead, will prove to the world, once and for all, that this creature is real.

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Ghosts, Space Aliens and Monsters - QNotes

Sometimes half measures can be a good thing especially on a journey this long. The agencys latest rover only has about 146 million miles left to reach its destination.

NASAs Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission has logged a lot of flight miles since being lofted skyward on July 30 146.3 million miles (235.4 million kilometers) to be exact. Turns out that is exactly the same distance it has to go before the spacecraft hits the Red Planets atmosphere like a 11,900 mph (19,000 kph) freight train on February 18, 2021.

At 1:40 p.m. Pacific Time today, our spacecraft will have just as many miles in its metaphorical rearview mirror as it will out its metaphorical windshield, said Julie Kangas, a navigator working on the Perseverance rover mission at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. While I dont think there will be cake, especially since most of us are working from home, its still a pretty neat milestone. Next stop, Jezero Crater.

The Suns gravitational influence plays a significant role in shaping not just spacecraft trajectories to Mars (as well as to everywhere else in the solar system), but also the relative movement of the two planets. So Perseverances route to the Red Planet follows a curved trajectory rather than an arrow-straight path.

NASAs Mars 2020 Perseverance rover reached its halfway point 146.3 million miles (235.4 million kilometers) on its journey to Jezero Crater on October 27, 2020, at 1:40 p.m. PDT (4:40 EDT). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Although were halfway into the distance we need to travel to Mars, the rover is not halfway between the two worlds, Kangas explained. In straight-line distance, Earth is 26.6 million miles [42.7 million kilometers] behind Perseverance and Mars is 17.9 million miles [28.8 million kilometers] in front.

At the current distance, it takes 2 minutes, 22 seconds for a transmission to travel from mission controllers at JPL via the Deep Space Network to the spacecraft. By time of landing, Perseverance will have covered 292.5 million miles (470.8 million kilometers), and Mars will be about 130 million miles (209 million kilometers) away from Earth; at that point, a transmission will take about 11.5 minutes to reach the spacecraft.

NASAs Mars 2020 Perseverance rover has logged 146.3 million (235.4 million kilometers) of space miles exactly half of what will be covered before reaching the Red Planet. View the full interactive experience at Eyes on the Solar System.

The mission team continues to check out spacecraft systems big and small during interplanetary cruise. Perseverances RIMFAX and MOXIE instruments were tested and determined to be in good shape on October 15. MEDA got a thumbs up on October 19. There was even a line item to check the condition of the X-ray tube in the PIXL instrument on October 16, which also went as planned.

If it is part of our spacecraft and electricity runs through it, we want to confirm it is still working properly following launch, said Keith Comeaux, deputy chief engineer for the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission. Between these checkouts along with charging the rovers and Mars Helicopters batteries, uploading files and sequences for surface operations, and planning for and executing trajectory correction maneuvers our plate is full right up to landing.

This illustration of the Mars 2020 spacecraft in interplanetary space was generated using imagery from NASAs Eyes on the Solar System. The image is from the missions midway point between Earth and Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A key objective of Perseverances mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planets geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

Subsequent missions, currently under consideration by NASA in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these cached samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 mission is part of a larger program that includes missions to the Moon as a way to prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. Charged with returning astronauts to the Moon by 2024, NASA will establish a sustained human presence on and around the Moon by 2028 through NASAs Artemis lunar exploration plans.

JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers.

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Woah, We're Halfway There: NASA's Perseverance Rover Is Midway to Mars - SciTechDaily