On Wednesday, the private company by Elon Musk, SpaceX announced on Twitter that plans to send a spacecraft to Mars until 2018.
The mission will be carried out by the Red spacecraft Dragon. It will land on Mars to retrieve samples collected by NASA's rover and then return to Earth.
Η SpaceX έχει ένα πολύ μεγάλο όραμα: να εγκαινιάσει μια νέα εποχή επαναχρησιμοποιήσιμων πυραύλων, που θα μπορούσαν να πάνε τους πρώτους ανθρώπους στον Άρη και να επιστρέψουν πίσω κάποια στιγμή. Το 2011 μάλιστα η SpaceX κυκλοφόρησε ένα βίντεο που έδειχνε πώς επρόκειτο να προσγειωθεί με ένα πύραυλο μετά την εκτόξευση του στο space, κάτι που ποτέ δεν είχε γίνει ποτέ πριν.
On December 21, 2015, SpaceX successfully launched its first reusable rocket, a Falcon 9, into a launching platform.
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 transport astronauts to the moon of the Apollo program, was able to provide more payload in 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 does travel to the International Space Station since 2010. But to get to Mars, which is 560.000 times further away, Dragon will have to be carried by a more powerful rocket than the Falcon 9 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 the atmosphere of Mars is thin, it can generate a lot of heat from friction on the spacecraft, which in order to land on Mars will have to have a heat shield that can withstand thermowinees 1.600 degrees Celsius.
Fortunately, Dragon's thermal shield can protect it from temperatures above 3.000 degrees Celsius.
As for the problem of deceleration there is a question. Although the gravity in Mars is about 1 / 3 than Earth's, the vehicle will still plummet vertically to the ground with over 1.000 miles an hour after entering the Mars atmosphere. Of course if you hit the ground at this speed, nothing will be left.
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 completed completely, it would end in disaster. NASA christened the landing process the "7 minutes of horror."
Let's see how Musk's ambitious plan will go. Musk said the Dragon is not a comfortable environment for space explorers.
This mission, however, marks an important milestone in NASA-SpaceX collaboration, bringing them a step closer to achieving their goal of sending people to Mars 2030.
This article was published by Business Insider.
