On Wednesday, the private company of elon musk, SpaceX announced on Twitter that plans to send a spacecraft to Mars until 2018.
On Mission θα εκτελέσει το διαστημικό σκάφος Red Dragon. Θα προσγειωθεί στον Άρη για να ανακτήσει τα δείγματα που συλλέγονται από το rover της NASA και στη συνέχεια να επιστρέψει στη Γη.
SpaceX has a very big vision: to launch a new era of reusable rockets that could take the first people to Mars and return back some time. Even 2011, SpaceX, released a video showing how it would land on a rocket after launching into space, something never done before.
On December 21, 2015, SpaceX successfully landed its first reusable rocket, a falcon 9, on a launch pad.
Another landing followed 8 April 2016 of a Falcon 9 on a barge floating on the ocean.
The Red Dragon will now reach space with the Falcon Heavy rocket, which is something like Falcon 9 with steroids. SpaceX has announced plans to test the rocket in space until November of 2016.
The company says that Falcon Heavy is the most powerful rocket in the world, and that it can carry twice the payload of Space Shuttle. Only the Saturn V, the rocket used to carry astronauts to moon of the Apollo program, was capable of delivering more payload into orbit.
Ο Falcon Heavy is a multi-tiered rocket, which means it contains separate rockets, or stages, one above the other. Each stage contains its own engine and its propellers. When a stage runs out of a propeller, it is ejected from the spacecraft to reduce the rest of the mass of the missile.
Judging from the images in company account on Flickr, SpaceX plans to land on Mars using a simple approach, something never tested before.
Dragon's unmanned capsule travels to the International Space Station from 2010. But in order to get to Mars, which is 560.000 farther away, the Dragon will have to be transferred from a more powerful rocket from Falcon 9, which used to reach the ISS.
However, this monster missile will face difficulties. Getting to Mars is much easier compared to landing on the planet, as the atmosphere of Mars is about 1.000 times less than Earth. So the use of a parachute will not slow down the fall of the spacecraft.
However, although Mars's atmosphere is sparse, it can generate a lot of heat from friction in the spacecraft, which, in order to land on Mars, should have a heat shield that can withstand temperatures of 1.600 degrees Celsius.
Fortunately, Dragon's thermal shield can protect it from temperatures above 3.000 degrees Celsius.
As far as problem της επιβράδυνσης υπάρχει θέμα. Παρά το γεγονός ότι η βαρύτητα στον Άρη είναι περίπου το 1/3 του από αυτή της Γης, το όχημα θα εξακολουθεί να πέφτει κατακόρυφα προς το έδαφος με πάνω από 1.000 μίλια την ώρα μετά την είσοδό του στην ατμόσφαιρα του Άρη. Φυσικά αν χτυπήσει το έδαφος με αυτή την ταχύτητα, δεν θα μείνει τίποτα.
SpaceX, however, aims to use propellers in the Dragon spacecraft as shown below, reducing its speed:
This kind of landing has never been tested before. The last big landing on Mars was that of 2012's NASA Curiosity Rover.
This landing was a huge success, but it was extremely complicated and required so many procedures that if not fully completed, it would have ended in disaster. At NASA they baptized her procedure landing the "7 minutes of terror."
Let's see how Musk's ambitious plan will go. Musk said the Dragon is not a comfortable environment for space explorers.
However, this mission marks an important milestone in cooperation between NASA and SpaceX, bringing them one step closer to their goal of sending humans to Mars in 2030.
This article was published by Business Insider.
