NASA Unveils How We’ll Get to Mars and Explore Deep Space
From BigThink
NASA’s been in a slump lately. The International Space Station (ISS) is going to be retired somewhere in 2024-2028. It doesn’t even have a rocket right now to send anything up there, anyway. Not after retiring the space shuttle. The agency has been concentrating for six years on developing its new Space Launch System (SLS), to run missions to other parts of our solar system. You can argue that the SLS will be worth the wait. These will be the most powerful, heavy rockets NASA’s ever built.http://bigthink.com/philip-perry/nasa-unveils-how-well-get-to-mars-and-explore-deep-spaceOf course, there is a planned mission to land humans on Mars by 2033. But that’s far off, and the details are been fuzzy. That’s why space heads stood up and took notice recently, when NASA’s chief of human spaceflight, Bill Gerstenmaier, gave a presentation. Gerstenmaier revealed to the agency’s advisory council tentative plans for a lunar space station.
As part of its NextSTEP program, NASA has employed six companies to help it design the next generation of stations and vehicles. Boeing just announced its contribution—the Deep Space Gateway lunar station. Now NASA’s vision is starting to become clearer.
At the agency’s presentation, Gerstenmaier outlined plans to build and launch the station, which will allow Deep Space Transport (DST) craft to dock, aiding them in longer range missions, including to Mars. NASA’s press release called the station a place that “offers a true deep space environment,” for humans to get acclimated.
Deep Space Gateway will allow for more lunar missions as well, including robotic ones. The advantage is, if something goes wrong, crew members can try and make it back home again, a luxury not afforded to those headed for Mars.
Follow @contentjunkie to stay up to date on more great posts like this one.
This post has been ranked within the top 25 most undervalued posts in the first half of Apr 05. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $0.33 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Apr 05 - Part I. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.
If you are the author and would prefer not to receive these comments, simply reply "Stop" to this comment.
"For certain purposes, of course, that is not true. When we navigate the ocean, or when we predict an eclipse, we often find it convenient to assume that the earth goes round the sun and that the stars are millions upon millions of kilometers away. But what of it?
Do you suppose it is beyond us to produce a dual system of astronomy? The stars can be near or distant, according as we need them. Do you suppose our mathematicians are unequal to that? Have you forgotten doublethink?" - 1984
Galileo, Einstein, Newton, .... All sellouts. People will choose a "good story" over cold hard facts. Enjoy your daily global programming. Propaganda at its finest. Goebbels would approve. Bon apathy.