Daily Archives: February 6, 2021

Editors note: Jim Bell is a professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University and has worked on a number of Mars missions. On Feb. 18, NASAs Mars 2020 mission will be arriving at the red planet, and hopefully will place the Perseverance Rover on the surface. Bell is the primary investigator leading a team in charge of one of the camera systems on Perseverance. We spoke with him for The Conversations new podcast, The Conversation Weekly, which launches today.

Below are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

What were looking for is evidence of past life, either direct chemical or organic signs in the composition and the chemistry of rocks, or textural evidence in the rock record. The environment of Mars is extremely harsh compared to the Earth, so were not really looking for evidence of current life. Unless something actually gets up and walks in front of the cameras, were really not going to find that.

There was a three- or four-year process that involved the entire global community of Mars and planetary science researchers to figure out where to send this rover. We chose a crater called Jezero. Jezero has a beautiful river delta in it, preserved from an ancient river that flowed down into that crater and deposited sediments. This is kind of like the delta at the end of the Mississippi River in Louisiana which is depositing sediments very gently into the Gulf of Mexico.

On Earth, this shallow water is a very gentle environment where organic molecules and fossils can actually be gently buried and preserved in very fine-grained mudstones. If a Martian delta operates the same way, then its a great environment for preserving evidence of things that were flowing in that water that came from the ancient highlands above the crater.

Theres lots of things we dont know, but there was liquid water there. There were heat sources there were active volcanoes 2, 3, 4 billion years ago on Mars and there are impact craters from asteroids and comets dumping lots of heat into the ground as well as organic molecules. Its a very short list of places in the solar system that meet those constraints, and Jezero is one of those places. Its one of the best places that we think to go to do this search for life.

The Perseverance Rover looks a lot like Curiosity on the outside because its made from something like 90% spare parts from Curiosity thats how NASA could afford this mission. Curiosity has a pair of cameras one wide angle, one telephoto.

In Perseverance, were sending similar cameras, but with zoom technology so we can zoom from wide angle to telephoto with both cameras the Z in Mastcam-Z stands for zoom. This allows us to get great stereo images. Just like our left eye and our right eye build a three-dimensional image in our brain, the zoom cameras on Perserverance are a left eye and a right eye. With this, we can build a three-dimensional image back on Earth when we get those images.

3D images allow us to do a whole range of things scientifically. We want to understand the topography of Mars in much more detail than weve been able to in the past. We want to put the pieces of the delta geology story together not just with two-dimensional, spatial information, but with height as well as texture. And we want to make 3D maps of the landing site.

Our engineering and driving colleagues really need that information too. These 3D images will help them decide where to drive by helping to identify obstacles and slopes and trenches and rocks and stuff like that, allowing them to drive the rover much deeper into places than they would have been able to otherwise.

And finally, were going to make really cool 3D views of our landing site to share with the public, including movies and flyovers.

Perseverance is intended to be the first part of a robotic sample return mission from Mars. So instead of just drilling into the surface like the Curiosity Rover does, Perseverance will drill and core into the surface and cache those little cores into tubes about the size of a dry-erase marker. It will then put those tubes onto the surface for a future mission later this decade to pick up and then bring back to the Earth.

Perseverance wont come back to the Earth, but the plan is to bring the samples that we collect back.

In the meantime, well be doing all of the science that any great rover mission would do. We are going to characterize the site, explore the geology and measure the atmospheric and weather properties.

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This is where it gets a little less certain, because these are all ideas and missions in the works. NASA and the European Space Agency are collaborating on a concept to build and launch a lander that will send a little fetch rover that goes and gets the little tubes, picks them up and brings them back to the lander. Waiting on the lander would be a small rocket called a Mars Ascent Vehicle, or MAV. Once the samples are loaded into the MAV, it launches them into Mars orbit.

Then youve got this grapefruit- to soccer-ball-sized canister up there, and NASA and the Europeans are collaborating on an orbiter that will search for that canister, capture it and then rocket it back to the Earth, where it will land in the Utah desert. What could possibly go wrong?

If successful, thatll be the first time weve done that from Mars. The scientific tools on the rovers are good, but nothing like the labs back on Earth. Bringing those samples back is going to be absolutely critical to getting the most out of the samples.

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Bringing Mars rocks back to Earth Perseverance Rover lands on Feb. 18, a lead scientist explains the tech and goals - The Conversation US

When NASA's Mars Perseverance rover touches down on the red planet later this month, it will arrive with a lot of precious cargo. Among the brand new technology is a drone that is set to be the first ever to fly on another planet: the Ingenuity helicopter.

Ingenuity is essentially a test flight it's experimenting with flight on another planet for the first time, and has limited capabilities. It weighs only about 4 pounds, but its success will no doubt pave the way for more ambitious exploration of the red planet.

"The Wright Brothers showed that powered flight in Earth's atmosphere was possible, using an experimental aircraft," Hvard Grip, Ingenuity's chief pilot at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said in a statement. "With Ingenuity, we're trying to do the same for Mars."

The rover doesn't carry any science instruments to support Perseverance, and is considered an entirely separate mission from the rover. It currently sits in Perseverance's belly, only to emerge after the duo touches down on Mars on February 18.

Mars' thin atmosphere, which is 99% less dense than Earth's, will make it difficult for Ingenuity to achieve enough lift to properly fly. Because of this, it has been designed to be extremely lightweight. It stands just 19 inches tall.

Thehelicopter has four large carbon-fiber blades, fashioned into two rotors that span about 4 feet and spin in opposite directions at about 2,400 rpm significantly faster than typical helicopters on Earth.

Additionally, the Jezero Crater, Perseverance's landing spot, is extremely cold temperatures at night drop to minus-130 degrees Fahrenheit. A lot of Ingenuity's power will go directly towards keeping warm rather than flight itself.

Flight controllers at JPL won't be able to control Ingenuity while it's actually flying. Due to significant communication delays, commands will be sent in advance of flights, and the team won't know how the flight went until its over. Ingenuity will be able to make its own decisions about how to fly and keep itself warm.

"This is a technology that's really going to open up a new exploration modality for us, very much like the rovers did 20 years ago when we flew Sojourner on the first mission to Mars," Matt Wallace, Mars 2020 deputy project manager at JPL, said during a news conference last week.

Perseverance is carrying more than two dozen cameras and Ingenuity has two of its own. Here on Earth, we will have a front-row view of Ingenuity's test flights from the rover's perspective, as well as aerial shots from the helicopter itself.

The name Ingenuity was originally submitted by Alabama high school student Vaneeza Rupani for the Mars 2020 rover, which was ultimately namedPerseverance. But the NASA team figured it would be the perfect name for a helicopter that took so much creative thinking to get off the ground.

"The ingenuity and brilliance of people working hard to overcome the challenges of interplanetary travel are what allow us all to experience the wonders of space exploration," Rupani wrote. "Ingenuity is what allows people to accomplish amazing things."

Twenty-eight thousand students across the U.S. submitted essays and proposed names for NASA'snewest Mars rover. Virginia seventh-grader Alexander Mather's suggestion, Perseverance, was ultimately chosen.

The team at NASA has a list of milestones for the helicopter to survive before it ever takes off on Mars:

After all of this, Ingenuity will take off for the first time, hovering just a few feet from the ground for about 20 to 30 seconds before landing. If it makes a successful first flight, the team will attempt up to four other tests within a month's time frame, each gradually pushing the limits of distance and altitude, like a baby bird learning to fly.

"The helicopter Ingenuity is a high risk, high reward endeavor," Wallace said. "It's something we have not tried and there's always going to be some probability of an issue. But that's why we're doing it we'll learn from the issue if it occurs."

Adding a component of aerial exploration could prove crucial tofuture planetary exploration.

"The Ingenuity team has done everything to test the helicopter on Earth, and we are looking forward to flying our experiment in the real environment at Mars," said MiMi Aung, Ingenuity's project manager at JPL. "We'll be learning all along the way, and it will be the ultimate reward for our team to be able to add another dimension to the way we explore other worlds in the future."

Helicopters on future Mars missions could act as robotic scouts, viewing terrain from above that rovers cannot access, or as spacecrafts carrying scientific instruments. They may even be able to help future astronauts someday explore the red planet.

But before any of this can happen, Perseverance needs to survive the "seven minutes of terror" that comprise its entry, descent and landing on Mars.NASAwill be live streaming the historic event on its website on February 18, beginning at 2:15 p.m. ET.

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Everything to know about NASA's Mars Ingenuity helicopter the first to fly on another planet - CBS News

China is holding a 40-day public vote to help select the name for its Mars rover which is currently closing in on the Red Planet.

The public can now vote for their favorites from a shortlist of 10 names for the Tianwen-1 mission rover.

The 10 names Hongyi, Qilin, Nezha, Chitu, Zhurong, Qiusuo, Fenghuolun, Zhuimeng, Tianxing and Xinghuo are taken from ideas including Chinese mythological figures, Confucian concepts and legendary animals.

Related: China's Tianwen-1 Mars mission in photos

Notably Hongyi, from the Confucian Analects, can be translated to "persistence" or perseverance, giving a similar meaning to the NASA Perseverance rover also heading for Mars. Others meanings include:

The Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center belonging to the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced the shortlist on Jan. 18 after soliciting suggestions after the mission launched in July last year.

China's Tianwen-1 mission includes both an orbiter and a rover, and the spacecraft are due to enter orbit around Mars on Feb. 10.

The rover will not attempt its landing until around May. The orbiter will image the landing site and determine the conditions on the ground in preparation for the landing.

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If it lands successfully the roughly 530-lb. (240 kilograms) solar-powered rover will investigate the surface soil characteristics and potential water-ice distribution with its Subsurface Exploration Radar instrument. The rover also carries panoramic and multispectral cameras and instruments to analyze the composition of rocks.

The Tianwen-1 mission and the chance to name the rover have generated a fair amount of attention.

"More than 1.4 million entries have been received from 38 countries and regions since we initiated the naming campaign in July 2020. Over 200,000 of them are eligible. The netizens' active participation shows their great care for the Mars mission," Yuan Foyu, director of the naming campaign for China's first Mars rover, told CCTV.

The vote is being hosted by Chinese internet giant Baidu with a deadline of Feb. 28. Judges will then deliberate and announce a final name sometime before the landing.

Tianwen-1 is China's first independent interplanetary mission and it also draws its name from history, with "Tianwen" meaning "Heavenly Questions" or "Questions to Heaven," being taken from a poem written by Qu Yuan (around 340-278 BCE).

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China's 1st Mars rover will get one of these 10 names, and you can vote to select the winner - Space.com

Mars is a desolate planet that is both Sun-blasted and frozen over. Its atmosphere has been all but obliterated by the ravages of solar radiation over billions of years, but does that mean it is forever lost to time?

There might still be pieces of Martian atmosphere trapped in its largest moon. Phobos may have a name that literally translates to fear, but what could be hiding just beneath its surface is nothing to be afraid of. It orbits through charged particles, or ions, that were once part of Mars atmosphere but escaped into space. Scientists now believe ions from that lost atmosphere slammed into Phobos as it made its way through them, and are probably still trapped in its surface. Dust from Phobos could potentially tell us how the atmosphere of Mars evolvedor devolved.

Phobos is original in the Solar System because it is also exposed to ions coming from the atmosphere of the Mars, UC Berkeley researcher Quentin Nnon, who recently led a study published in Nature Geoscience, told SYFY WIRE.

Runaway ions from Mars may prove or disprove the idea that Mars was once much more Earthlike, with a thick atmosphere and liquid water on its surface. There could have even been some sort of life. Whatever is left of the Red Planets atmosphere (if you could even call it that) has less than one percent of Earths atmospheric density. Phobos is thought to have collected quite a few ions from Mars because it orbits extremely close to the planet. Because it is tidally locked, like our Moon, so one side is always facing Mars. That side has been exposed to anywhere from 20 to 100 times more ions than the far side, so whatever relics are left of Mars atmosphere could be embedded in its surface.

This is where NASAs MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft comes in. MAVEN has been orbiting Mars since late 2014 in an effort to investigate it lost its atmosphere, and also beams back insight about how the Martian climate has morphed into what it is now. To see if Phobos really was showered with Martian ions, as opposed to solar ions or other random particles flying around, Nnon analyzed MAVEN data from when the spacecraft passed through the moons orbit. Particle velocity and kinetic energy measurements from MAVENs STATIC (Suprathermal and Thermal Ion Composition) instrument gave away the mass of ions it ran into. Martian ions were singled out this way.

Most of the ions that impact the surface of Phobos have relatively high velocities, so that they actually penetrateinsidethe surface or rock, Nnon said. While traveling inside the surface, ions are decelerated until they stop somewhere inside the material. Once stopped, they are surrounded by many molecules, so that they cannot escape to space.

More mysteries surround Phobos and its brother moon, Deimos. Where they came from is unknown. The could have broken off from Mars, as Earths Moon is thought to have done, or they might have formed in the same cloud of dust and gas Mars emerged from. They might have even been huge hunks of debris from a collision or asteroids that were captured by Martian gravity. Getting evidence for any of these scenarios would need deeper probing, because the surfaces of Phobos and Deimos are nowhere near the same as they were when they were born. Nnon believes the absence of an atmosphere left both moon vulnerable.

Phobos does not have an atmosphere to protect its surface, so the primitive composition of rocks exposed to outer space is altered by the harsh space environment, he said. Basically, anything that impacts Phobos' surface alters its properties, including sunlight, the solar wind, micrometeoroids and large bodies."

Moons can often tell us about the distant past of the planets they orbit. Our own Moon is the best record we have of the early solar system, because it doesn't have an atmosphere or geological processes such as wind or flowing water to wear away at that evidence (this is unfortunately also the reason that Moon dust can be lethal to both humans and science instruments). Lunar craters that have essentially remained the same as they were four billion years ago have told scientists about the Late Heavy Bombardment, a period of turbulence during which both Earth and its satellite were beaten up by asteroids and other bodies.

Apollo astronauts brought back lunar soil that revealed the violent past Earth and the Moon went through. It would be just about impossible to tell what hit our planet at the same time that the moon was getting bombarded, because our atmosphere along with wind, water, the shifting of soil and other phenomena would have worn away at those craters for eons. Some may be buried deep underground while others disappeared completely. Astronauts didnt even have to traverse the Moon for scientists to find this out, because samples of its regolith were enough.

Right now, we do not know which specific insights a sample from Phobos could reveal about the ancient Martian atmosphere, said Nnon. The hope is to maybe constrain the composition of the ancient Martian atmosphere. Understanding the composition of Phobos' samples that will be brought back to Earth by MMX in 2029 will be a challenge, and our contribution is to highlight that one important piece of the puzzle, which is the transfer of ions from the atmosphere of Mars to the surface of its moon Phobos.

Even though Phobos has not been sampled yet, what Nnon and his team were able to find out even without physical evidence is still telling. JAXAs Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) probe will take off for Phobos in 2024, and is expected to bring something back by 2029, and scientists examining these samples will know what to look out for. They may finally reveal secrets that are still lingering in space.

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What secrets about Mars is its moon Phobos hiding? - SYFY WIRE

Welcome to the first episode of The Conversation Weekly, a new podcast from The Conversations global network.

In this episode, we find out why February 2021 is such a big month for Mars. Three different missions from three different countries the United Arab Emirates, China and the U.S. are due to arrive at the red planet within a few weeks of each other.

We talk to Jim Bell, Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, who is leading one of the camera teams for NASAs Perseverance Rover. He explains how these missions are looking for signs of ancient life and where the scientists will start their search.

Steffi Paladini, Reader in Economics and Global Security at Birmingham City University, sheds light on some of the political motivations behind Chinas ambitious Mars mission, Tianwen-1, which includes an orbiter, lander and rover. You can read more about the Chinese space race here.

And Nidhal Guessoum, Professor of Astrophysics at the American University of Sharjah explains the symbolism of the UAEs Hope mission and what its trying to achieve.

In our second story, we turn to Belarus, where protests continue more than six months after a disputed election. Flix Krawatzek, Senior Researcher at the Centre for East European and International Studies and Associate Member of Nuffield College, University of Oxford, talks through the initial findings from a recent public opinion survey in Belarus and why he sees similarities between what happened in Belarus and the protests currently rocking Russia following the detention of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Read more about the survey data here.

And we finish with some reading recommendations from Ina Skosana, health and medicine editor in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The Conversation Weekly is produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware, with sound design by Eloise Stevens and music by Neeta Sarl.

News clips in this episode from BBC News, CCTV, Nasa, Euronews, the Embassy of the UAE - Washington, ABC News, AFP News Agency, Al Jazeera English, DW News, France 24 and Global News.

A transcript of this episode is available here.

You can also listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps below, our RSS feed, or find out how else to listen here.

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Mars - The Conversation UK

When French musician Thomas Mars met director Sofia Coppola in person for the first time in 2000, he was wearing a wig and singing under a fake name at an American Legion hall in Los Angeles. Back in Paris a few months earlier, hed contributed vocals and lyrics to Playground Love, the signature tune from Coppolas debut film, The Virgin Suicides.

In that American Legion hall, he was guest-performing with his pals in the band Air, whod composed the score for the film. Mars performed in disguise to avoid confusion with his primary identity as frontman for his own band, Phoenix, which hed started as a child. Mars says, I wanted to avoid talking about anything else other than Phoenix when our first record came out later that year.

With or without the wig, Mars hit it off with Coppola. For her Lost in Translation, she used his plaintive Too Young as accompaniment for Bill Murrays lonely drive through Tokyo. For Marie Antoinette, Phoenix musicians played a minuet for Kirsten Dunsts queen in Mars hometown of Versailles.

From there, the relationship picked up steam. A few months after Mars and his group earned an alternative-music Grammy for their sleek 2009 synth-pop album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, he and Coppola were married.

Most recently, Mars and Phoenix bandmates Deck DArcy, Christian Mazzalai and Laurent Brancowitz supervised the soundtrack, composed the score and wrote the end-credits song for Coppolas father-daughter comedy, On the Rocks. Speaking from New York City, where he lives with Coppola and their two daughters, Mars describes a largely chitchat-free creative rapport with his director wife.

In our band, we grew up together, so we dont really talk much about music, and it feels the same way with Sofia. We listen to the same music, and our cultural influences are so similar theres very little talking about things.

Sofia Coppola and husband Thomas Mars at Cannes in 2014.

(Andreas Rentz / Getty Images)

But the music itself speaks volumes in On the Rocks, which summons a jazzy, mid-century Manhattan vibe personified by Bill Murrays Felix, a charming art dealer who gives his daughter Laura (Rashida Jones) misguided advice when she suspects her husband of having an affair. Setting the tone at the outset: I Fall in Love Too Easily, recorded by crooner-trumpeter Chet Baker in 1954. Sofia listened to a lot of Chet Baker when she wrote the script, so she came up with that song, Mars says. We just had to complete this world.

A connoisseur of Italian pop music, Mars reinforced Felixs bon vivant persona with Mina Mazzinis peppy 1959 rocker Nessuno and referenced Jack Nicholson as a larger-than-life role model by having Felix blast Schubert through the loudspeakers from the backseat of his limousine. To underscore traffic-defying jaunts through Manhattan in a vintage red Ferrari, Phoenix guitarist Brancowitz recommended In Orbit, an antic 1958 jazz instrumental by Thelonious Monk and the Clark Terry Quartet. When Laura and Felix take off in his car, we wanted to show how fun, how dangerous, how insane, how thrilling it is to be part of Felixs world. Branco suggested In Orbit, and right away it felt right, Mars says.

In Re Don Giovanni, based on Mozarts opera, serves as de facto theme song for Laura, a harried mother of two. We use Giovanni the same way as All That Jazz used Vivaldi, when Bob Fosse wakes up, takes his pills and does his morning ritual. Lauras life is very scheduled and organized, but shes not really deciding things for herself. We wanted the music to show that.

Rashida Jones and Bill Murray drive through New York in a scene from On the Rocks.

(A24 / Apple TV+ )

For the films original score, Phoenix took inspiration from Miles Davis approach to Louis Malles 1958 movie Elevator to the Gallows. As Mars explains it, Louis Malle grabbed Miles Davis as soon as he landed in Paris and convinced him to see his movie in a theater: We will set up your gear to record, and you can play to the film. So we did the same thing. In a Paris screening room, Mars and his bandmates improvised music in the moment as action unfolded on screen. It was really fun, because you get into this strange meditative state where youre feeding off each other. We recorded several hours of music over two nights; thats how we wrote the score.

On the Rocks concludes with a buoyant new Phoenix song called Identical. Musically, the number samples a propulsive drum groove by South African band Faka. Lyrically, the track evokes a parent-child dynamic rarely featured in Top 10 hits. Mars says, A lot of pop music today is all about youth, but I tried to find a way to embrace fatherhood with Identical. Its about raising your kids and all the anxiety that goes with that. With Bill Murray and Rashida Jones, you dont need sex appeal in the song, because its all on the screen.

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Phoenix scores, writes, supervises 'On the Rocks' music - Los Angeles Times

The Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. Photo Courtesy LANL

BRADBURY SCIENCE MUSEUM NEWS

NASAs Perseverance rover will touch down on the surface of Mars the afternoon of Thursday,Feb. 18. Celebrate the landing and learn more about Los Alamos National Laboratorys role in the mission at a virtual after-party scheduled for that evening at6 p.m.!

Hosted by the Bradbury Science Museum, this hour-long virtual event will feature presentations by more than a dozen Los Alamos scientists and engineers who helped develop SuperCam, the rock-vaporizing laser that will study the Martian surface for signs of past life, and SHERLOC, the instrument that will search for organics and minerals on Mars. The rovers plutonium power source will also be discussed.

REGISTER NOW!

Brush up on your Mars knowledge and tackle trivia questions. Here are just some of the fun things youll learn on Feb. 18:

Also, test your Mars knowledge with trivia questions and ask the scientists questions in a live Q&A.

The event is free and open to the public, so be sure to join with your friends and family.

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Celebrate The Mars Perseverance Landing With The Bradbury Science Museum Feb. 18 - Los Alamos Reporter

NASA, in collaboration with three international partners, is planning to launch a robotic Mars ice mapping mission, which could help the agency identify potential science objectives for initial human missions to Mars. It could help identify abundant, accessible ice for future candidate landing sites on the Red Planet.

The agencies have agreed to establish a joint concept team to assess mission potential, as well as partnership opportunities, NASA said on Wednesday. Under the statement of intent that they have signed, NASA, the Italian Space Agency (ASI), the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced their intention to develop a mission plan and define their potential roles and responsibilities.

If the concept moves forward, the mission could be ready to launch as early as 2026, NASA said.

The international Mars Ice Mapper mission would detect the location, depth, spatial extent, and abundance of near-surface ice deposits, which would enable the science community to interpret a more detailed volatile history of Mars.

The radar-carrying orbiter would also help identify properties of the dust, loose rocky materialknown as regolithand rock layers that might impact the ability to access ice.

The ice-mapping mission could help the agency identify potential science objectives for initial human missions to Mars, which are expected to be designed for about 30 days of exploration on the surface.

For example, identifying and characterising accessible water ice could lead to human-tended science, such as ice coring to support the search for life. Mars Ice Mapper also could provide a map of water-ice resources for later human missions with longer surface expeditions, as well as help meet exploration engineering constraints, such as avoidance of rock and terrain hazards.

Mapping shallow water ice could also support supplemental high-value science objectives related to Martian climatology and geology, NASA said.

"This innovative partnership model for Mars Ice Mapper combines our global experience and allows for cost- sharing across the board to make this mission more feasible for all interested parties," Jim Watzin, NASA's senior advisor for agency architectures and mission alignment, said in a statement.

"Human and robotic exploration go hand in hand, with the latter helping pave the way for smarter, safer human missions farther into the solar system. Together, we can help prepare humanity for our next giant leap -- the first human mission to Mars."

As the mission concept evolves, there may be opportunities for other space agency and commercial partners to join the mission.

**

The above article has been published from a wire agency with minimal modifications to the headline and text.

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NASA Plans to Launch Robotic Mission to Study and Map Ice on Mars | The Weather Channel - Articles from The Weather Channel | weather.com - The...

A Department of Energy (DoE) physicist has a new nuclear fusion rocket concept that uses magnetic fields to make thrust. Its a far-out idea that could carry astronauts to Mars.

You like nuclear. So do we. Let's nerd out over nuclear together.

The mechanism is already at play in Earths nuclear fusion reactors, as well as the solar flares of the sun. Could we really use linking and unlinking magnetic fields to make the long trip to the red planet?

The device would apply magnetic fields to cause particles of plasma, electrically charged gas also known as the fourth state of matter, to shoot out the back of a rocket and, because of the conservation of momentum, propel the craft forward, DoEs Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) said in a statement.

Think of a person sitting in a wheelie office chair holding a huge Roman candle. When you light the firework, the chair is propelled by the outpouring of directional energy.

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Physicist Fatima Ebrahimi first thought of the idea after hearing of the speeds that particles reach inside PPPLs national Spherical Torus Experiment, a tokamak reactor. During its operation, this tokamak produces magnetic bubbles called plasmoids that move at around 20 kilometers per second, which seemed to me a lot like thrust, she said in the statement. Her thruster basically works as a tokamak with one side cut out to release energy.

Fatima Ebrahimi/PPPL/arXiv

Fusion reactor experiments are popular on Earth as the next generation of nuclear energy technology, but none has created more power than it uses ... yet. Spaceflight is a popular additional use case for plasma fusion ideas because fusion technology can, hypothetically, stay pretty lightweight while generating a ton of thrust. High-temperature elements in plasma form are confined and selectively released to propel a spacecraft.

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OYS 70mm Aperture Telescope

With hundreds ofpositive reviews on Amazon and a 4.8/5 rating, it's not hard to see why OYS's telescope is the retailer's bestseller.This option features a 70mm aperture and fully coated optimal lensesto offer a crisp, clear view of the night's sky. Tech savvy stargazers will appreciate the smart phone adapter and wireless camera remote, making it possible to view constellations from your screen. Thanks to its adjustable, aluminum alloy tripod, this telescope is suitable for every member of the family.

BEST FOR HOBBYISTS

Celestron NexStar 5SE Computerized Telescope

If you want to take your stargazing game up a couple of notches, Celestron's NexStar 5SE Telescope is ideal for beginners and advanced hobbyists alike. With a four-inch primary mirror, this telescope is compact, but lets plenty of light in so you can see everything the solar system has to offer. Not only does this telescope have a computerized to-go mount that tracks your target's movements, but it also comes with Celestron's app so you can learn more about what you're seeing. If you want to learn something neweven as an advanced stargazerthis one's for you.

BEST FOR HOBBYISTS

Celestron NexStar 4SE Computerized Telescope

If you want to take your stargazing game up a couple of notches, Celestron's NexStar 4SE Telescope is ideal for beginners and advanced hobbyists alike. With a four-inch primary mirror, this telescope is compact, but lets plenty of light in so you can see everything the solar system has to offer. Not only does this telescope have a computerized to-go mount that tracks your target's movements, but it also comes with Celestron's app so you can learn more about what you're seeing. If you want to learn something neweven as an advanced stargazerthis one's for you.

Ebrahimis device has three key differences from other designs in the mix, PPPL says. First, it uses electromagnets to adjust the thrust, like a magnetic gas pedal that astronauts could use to increase or decrease velocity. Second, this design uses both traditional plasma and an additional material called plasmoidsthese greatly increase the thrust potential.

And finally, Ebrahimis device design is flexible to work with any gaseous element, meaning both lighter, smaller atoms of gas and bigger, heavier ones. This gives spacefaring groups the option to choose different kinds of burns for longer or shorter flights, for example.

[C]omputer simulations performed on PPPL computers [...] showed that the new plasma thruster concept can generate exhaust with velocities of hundreds of kilometers per second, 10 times faster than those of other thrusters, PPPL says. That means the thruster could shorten the longest flight times by a factor of 10, bringing many more destinations into our field of feasibility.

This would also help to address a major factor that stands between humans and longer spaceflights: the cosmic radiation that will permeate almost any spacecraft. The faster we can travel in the dangerous radiation of space, the less astronauts will be exposed. Faster travel will reduce other, less tangible human costs, like the psychological and physical toll of long stays in interplanetary space.

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The Unusual Rocket Thruster That Will Send Humans to Mars - Popular Mechanics