How Long Do You Have to Wait to Dodge Again on Lol
This article originally appeared in Universe Today in July, 2012, merely it's been updated with a related video.
The planet Mars is one of the brightest objects in the night sky, easily visible with the unaided eye as a brilliant red star. Every two years or so, Mars and Earth achieve their closest point, chosen "opposition", when Mars can be equally close as 55,000,000 km from Earth. And every two years, space agencies take advantage of this orbital alignment to send spacecraft to the Red Planet. How long does information technology take to get to Mars?
The total journeying time from Earth to Mars takes betwixt 150-300 days depending on the speed of the launch, the alignment of World and Mars, and the length of the journey the spacecraft takes to achieve its target. It really just depends on how much fuel you're willing to burn to become there. More than fuel, shorter travel time.
History of Going to Mars:
The first spacecraft ever to make the journey from Globe to Mars was NASA's Mariner 4, which launched on November 28, 1964 and arrived at Mars July 14, 1965, successfully taking a serial of 21 photographs. Mariner iv'south total flight time was 228 days.
The next successful mission to Mars was Mariner six, which blasted off on Feb 25, 1969 and reached the planet on July 31, 1969; a flight fourth dimension of simply 156 days. The successful Mariner vii just required 131 days to brand the journey.
Mariner nine, the start spacecraft to successfully go into orbit around Mars launched on May 30, 1971, and arrived November thirteen, 1971 for a duration of 167 days. This is the same pattern that has held up for more almost 50 years of Mars exploration: approximately 150-300 days.
Hither are some more examples:
- Viking 1 (1976) – 335 days
- Viking 2 (1976) – 360 days
- Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (2006) – 210 days
- Phoenix Lander (2008) – 295 days
- Curiosity Lander (2012) – 253 days
Why Does information technology Take Then Long?:
When you lot consider the fact that Mars is but 55 million km away, and the spacecraft are travelling in excess of twenty,000 km/hour, you would expect the spacecraft to make the journeying in about 115 days, only it takes much longer. This is because both Earth and Mars are orbiting effectually the Dominicus. Y'all can't point direct at Mars and start firing your rockets, considering past the time you got there, Mars would have already moved. Instead, spacecraft launched from World need to exist pointed at where Mars is going to be.
The other constraint is fuel. Once again, if you lot had an unlimited corporeality of fuel, you'd point your spacecraft at Mars, fire your rockets to the halfway signal of the journey, then plough effectually and decelerate for the last half of the journey. You could cutting your travel time downwardly to a fraction of the electric current rate – but you would need an impossible amount of fuel.
How to Go to Mars with the Least Corporeality of Fuel:
The primary business organisation of engineers is how to go a spacecraft to Mars, on the least amount of fuel. Robots don't really care about the hostile environment of space, so it makes sense to decrease the launch costs of the rocket equally much equally possible.
NASA engineers use a method of travel called a Hohmann Transfer Orbit – or a Minimum Energy Transfer Orbit – to ship a spacecraft from Earth to Mars with the least amount of fuel possible. The technique was first proposed by Walter Hohmann who published the first description of the maneuver in 1925.
Instead of pointing your rocket directly at Mars, you boost the orbit of your spacecraft so that it's following a larger orbit around the Dominicus than the Earth. Eventually that orbit will intersect the orbit of Mars – at the exact moment that Mars is at that place also.
If you need to launch with less fuel, you just take longer to raise your orbit, and increase the journey to Mars.
Other Ideas to Subtract the Travel Time to Mars:
Although it requires some patience to wait for a spacecraft to travel 250 days to reach Mars, we might want a completely different propulsion method if nosotros're sending humans. Space is a hostile place, and the radiations of interplanetary space might pose a longterm wellness take chances to homo astronauts. The groundwork catholic rays inflict a constant barrage of cancer-inducing radiations, but in that location's a bigger risk of massive solar storms, which could impale unprotected astronauts in a few hours. If y'all can subtract the travel time, yous reduce the corporeality of time astronauts are getting pelted with radiation, and minimize the amount of supplies they demand to carry for a return journey.
Get Nuclear:
Ane idea is nuclear rockets, which heat upwards a working fluid – like hydrogen – to intense temperatures in a nuclear reactor, so boom information technology out a rocket nozzle at high velocities to create thrust. Because nuclear fuels are far more than energy dense than chemical rockets, you could get a higher thrust velocity with less fuel. Information technology'southward proposed that a nuclear rocket could subtract the travel fourth dimension down to about 7 months
Go Magnetic:
Some other proposal is a engineering called the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (or VASIMR). This is an electromagnetic thruster which uses radio waves to ionize and rut a propellant. This creates an ionized gas called plasma which can be magnetically thrust out the dorsum of the spacecraft at high velocities. Quondam astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz is pioneering the development of this technology, and a paradigm is expected to exist installed on the International Space Station to assist it maintain its altitude above Earth. In a mission to Mars, a VASIMR rocket could reduce the travel time down to five months.
Go Antimatter:
Maybe one of the well-nigh extreme proposals would be to use an antimatter rocket. Created in particle accelerators, antimatter is the most dense fuel y'all could peradventure employ. When atoms of matter see atoms of antimatter, they transform into pure energy, every bit predicted by Albert Einstein'due south famous equation: E = mc2. Just x milligrams of antimatter would be needed to propel a human mission to Mars in only 45 days. But so, producing fifty-fifty that minuscule amount of antimatter would price about $250 million.
Future Missions to Mars:
Even though some incredible technologies have been proposed to shorten the travel fourth dimension to Mars, engineers will be using the tried and true methods of following minimum free energy transfer orbits using chemic rockets. NASA'southward MAVEN mission will launch in 2013 using this technique, too ESA's ExoMars missions. It might be a few decades before other methods become mutual techniques.
Research further:
Information about Interplanetary Orbits – NASA
7 Minutes of Terror – The Claiming of Landing at Mars
NASA Proposal for a nuclear rocket engine
Hohmann Transfer Orbits – Iowa Land Academy
Minimum Transfers and Interplanetary Orbits
New and Improved Antimatter Space Ship for Mars Missions – NASA
Astronomy Cast Episode 84: Getting Around the Solar System
Related Stories from Universe Today:
Travel to Mars in Only 39 Days
A One Manner, One Person Mission to Mars
Could a Human Mission to Mars exist Funded Commercially?
How Volition MSL Navigate to Mars? Very Carefully
A Cheap Solution to Getting to Mars?
Why have and so many missions to Mars failed?
This article originally appeared in Universe Today in July, 2012, but it's been updated with a related video.
Podcast (audio): Download (Duration: iii:17 — 3.0MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Podcast (video): Download (75.6MB)
Subscribe: Apple tree Podcasts | RSS
Source: https://www.universetoday.com/14841/how-long-does-it-take-to-get-to-mars/
0 Response to "How Long Do You Have to Wait to Dodge Again on Lol"
Postar um comentário