Human mission To Mars


Human mission To Mars


Even as SpaceX is planning to launch astronauts for the first time , the company expresses its visions on a much larger scale for human spaceflight: missions to Mars. SpaceX wants to do Human mission To Mars.

The ambition of SpaceX to place humans on Mars is nothing new; with that purpose in mind, the business was established. But now, the company is testing early models of the spacecraft it wants to use on such trips, determining possible landing sites, and dreaming about what a long-term Red Planet base will look like several years from now.

"Paul Wooster, principal Mars development engineer at SpaceX, said during a May 20 meeting of the Committee on Space Science (COSPAR) focused on human missions to Mars," In terms of the vision that we are heading towards, it is really to enable cities on Mars and all that comes with having a city, having a large and growing population.

"Obviously, this is a really necessary endeavour, one that will take many years, maybe many decades, to really accomplish," he said.

The Starship, driven by the Super Heavy booster, is the vehicle the company envisions as the workhorse for such a city. The pair is still in progress, with SpaceX performing early testing at its site in Texas on a string of Starship prototypes. No full-size prototype has yet left the floor.

While Wooster said Super Heavy will basically be a scaled-up version of the reusable boosters that power the company's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, the massive booster designs have not yet been publicly displayed.

Nevertheless, Wooster said, SpaceX hopes the pair can come together quickly enough that during the 2022 opportunity window, the company will propose launching the first uncrewed test missions to Mars. (Mars aligns favourably with Earth for spacecraft missions every 26 months; three distinct robotic missions can be launched to the Red Planet in the upcoming window in late July and early August 2020.)

Whatever the timeline of the Mars programme for SpaceX, here's what the business envisages: the journeys to Mars will depend on fuel depots stationed in Earth orbit. An individual Mars-bound Starship would be launched to Earth orbit by a Super Heavy rocket, where it would rendezvous with a Starship full of fuel previously launched, which would then move along the propellant.

First, before it eventually lands upright, the Starship will head to Mars, belly flopping through the atmosphere covered by heat-resistant shielding. During the first Mars window, two or more cargo Starships will start.

A crewed Starship could follow, followed by more freighters, if this initial batch of flights went smoothly. Although the Starship is discussed as carrying 100 individuals, Wooster said early missions would likely carry much smaller crews to allow more space for cargo required to set up camp on the Red Planet. In order to minimise the radiation to which humans will be exposed during the trip, SpaceX hopes to trim the Mars trip to below six months, or even as short as four months.

The first priority will be to scout and process local supplies, as crewed missions arrive on the surface. Wooster said that starships are planned to operate on liquid methane-oxygen fuel, partly because of the low cost of those materials on Earth, but also because scientists believe they can be generated on Mars. Mapping the availability and accessibility of the raw materials for that fuel would be among the first tasks for Starship missions, so humans would have a way to get home to Earth.

Assets also form where the organisation wishes to settle. Two possible sites, Wooster said, are based on SpaceX, one near Arcadia Planitia and Erebus Montes and the other near Phlegra Montes. Both meet certain main criteria: they are in the centre of the world where landing is easier and they are at lower elevations, so the thicker atmosphere can do more of the work to slow down an incoming spacecraft.

And there appears to be plenty of ice nearby, of course. "We concentrate this landing-site identification effort very much on areas with very large amounts of water ice," Wooster said. "The resource is really important."

Next, essential facilities such as landing pads, habitats, power generation systems, radiation shelters and greenhouses will come, Wooster said, but he stressed that SpaceX focuses on transportation and leaves other organisations with the creation of other components.

If a final site is chosen and missions begin, Wooster said that he believes SpaceX will find itself from his experience designing its Starship test site near Boca Chica in South Texas with a little deja vu. Even though residents who lived long before SpaceX came to town in the beach community and have since fended off buyout offers and nearby explosions can disagree.

"When we came in, this site was very undeveloped," Wooster said, "so I think we've also been going through a lot of the same kinds of stuff that you will potentially face on Mars in terms of trying to set up facilities, but obviously much simpler in terms of having air and such available to you."


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