In the titanic scientific and technological race to colonize Mars, there are many challenges we face. One of the biggest, the long journey, especially to resupply the settlers at short notice.
At the moment, it takes about seven months to reach the Red Planet, but an idea recently proposed by a team from McGill University, and published in the journal Acta Astronautica , could reduce that time to just 45 days.
How do you plan to do it?
Researchers propose a form of propulsion called “thermal laser propulsion”: the laser, a system that uses a set of lasers of 000 meters wide on Earth, which would heat the hydrogen plasma in a chamber behind the spacecraft, producing thrust from the hydrogen gas and sending it to Mars in a very short time , calculated from 45 days, according to a press release from McGill University.
The researchers detail in their article that, if this is achieved, the ship would not need any chemical fuel on board to slow down, as a traditional spacecraft would. The supply ship could thus use the thin atmosphere of Mars to slow down through a maneuver called “airbrake”.
“Laser thermal propulsion allows to carry out one-ton fast transport missions with volleyball court-sized laser arrays,” says Emmanuel Duplay, lead author of a paper and an alumnus of the Engineering Summer Research Program at McGill University.
The team created the concept after NASA launched an engineering challenge to design a method of reaching Mars that could carry a payload of 1, kilos in no more than 45 days.
The short delivery time is motivated by the desire to transport cargo and, one day, astronauts to Mars while minimizing their exposure to the damaging effects of galactic cosmic rays and solar storms.
According to scientists, it is likely that the first humans to reach Mars will not do so with thermal laser propulsion technology. However, as more humans make the long-term journey to maintain a colony, “we will need propulsion systems to get us there faster, if only to avoid radiation hazards,” says Duplay.
A laser-thermal mission to Mars could, according to the statement, be launched 10 years after the first human missions, in other words, a year ago 2040.
With information from DW.
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