Mars Exploration

| July 31, 2020

NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover has successfully launched on its epic mission to the Red Planet.

The rover launched into space atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at 7:50 a.m. EDT from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

After a seven month transit, The Rover will seek evidence of ancient Martian life forms and even attempt powered flight via Ingenuity, a helo the craft transported from Earth.

Manned missions are currently in the planning stages.

AW1 Rod sends.

Florida Tech Researchers Explore Buzz Aldrin’s Mars Cycler Concept

BY RYAN RANDALL

Mars is the next frontier in space for human exploration, but how will we get there? Research underway at Florida Tech is examining travel possibilities via a cycler spacecraft and an associated crew transfer system.

Aerospace engineering associate professor Markus Wilde, alongside university graduate student Larissa Balestrero Machado, recently released a research paper, “Parametric Design of a Crew Transfer Vehicle for Earth–Mars Cyclers” that examines the spacecraft mass and size required to transfer crew between Earth, a cycler spacecraft, and Mars.

The cycler spacecraft would stay in an elliptical orbit around the Sun, performing regular fly-bys of Earth and Mars. The crew transfer vehicle would lift off from Earth during one of those fly-bys, catch up with the cycler to deliver the crew, and after a few months transport the crew from the cycler to a low Mars orbit. After the crew finishes its mission on Mars, the crew transfer vehicle and cycler will then be used in reverse order to get the crew back to Earth and pick up the next expedition. The cycler potentially will provide a providing a potential cost-efficient and energy-efficient space travel solution.

Wilde and Machado’s initial research findings have determined that “aerocapture,” an orbital transfer maneuver in which a spacecraft uses aerodynamic drag force from a single pass through a planetary atmosphere to decelerate and achieve orbit insertion, could reduce the amount of fuel needed to reach Mars. The findings also emphasized the importance of a heat shield, which would be used to prevent spacecraft from burning up on entry into a planet’s atmosphere.

“The idea is, what if we start flying missions to Mars basically every time we can, so that we start a pipeline almost like a train service that would get new crews to and from Mars every two years?” Wilde said. “Instead of flying point-to-point missions that we do with rovers and unmanned spacecraft, we could use a cycler for sustainable, crewed Mars exploration.”

The motivation for the current cycler research stems from Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, whose Cycling Pathway to Occupy Mars system involved spacecraft travelling between Earth and Mars possibly using far less propellant than conventional means, with an expected five-and-a-half-month journey from the Earth to Mars, and a return trip to Earth of about the same duration on a twin semi-cycler.

Buzz was a brilliant engineer and the first Astronaut with a doctoral degree. He also was a fighter pilot.

Read the entire article here: Ad Astra

Thanks, AW1 Rod.

Category: Air Force, NASA, Science and Technology

32 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
penguinman000

Just got finished watching the series Mars on Netflix. Pretty good series. Highly suggest it if anyone likes this kind of stuff.

FuzeVT

ATLAS V and Ingenuity – Lockheed products!

KoB

That good old fashioned American Ingenuity. And Buzz was the Man.

Only time Lockheed kinda screwed up was a certain piece of Naval Aviation Aircraft that had the wings and motors mounted all kerflooie/caddywhoompussed. 😛

FuzeVT

Talking about the B-36? That was a Lockheed legacy company, Convair (which was actually made up of Consolidated and the less well known Vultree).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_B-36_Peacemaker

Too late for WWII, outdated for the jet age. Still had a respectable life span. Quite symbolically, it had jets and turbines as it bridge the prop to jet era.

KoB

Naw FuzzVT, wuz actually digging a little at AW1Ed on how Big Navy prostituted the venerable C130 Herky Bird, put the wings and motors on wrong and called it a P3. Per this example:

KoB

The P3 was an OK Airplane, but in addition to it’s other duties and in it’s spare time the Herky Bird could also land on a carrier. It’s a little GO ARMY/BEAT NAVY ‘Ed loves to hate me thing we have going on.

Slow Joe

The Atlas V is like 60 years old…

I’d wouldn’t want to fly in that.

HMCS(FMF) ret
Mason

The backbone of the American bomber fleet is that old. The NEWEST B-52 was built in 1963. Similarly the T-38 Talon’s newest airframe was made in ’72.

HMCS(FMF) ret

There are three missions headed to Mars

– UAE’s first try – Hope
– NASA/JPL’s Perseverance (there is a drone onboard called Ingenuity – will try to fly on Mars)
– China’s Tianwen 1, launched on July 23rd

https://www.space.com/three-mars-missions-launch-july-2020.html

Toxic Deplorable Racist SAH B Woodman

Hurry up! I wanna get off this planet!

5th/77th FA

Tox why can’t we head to Venus? Isn’t that where the wimmins are from? Pack wine, chocolates, and ice cream.

RGR 4-78

Strange it worked when I clicked it.

If it’s broken it was supposed to be Slim Pickens reading the survival check list.

Toxic Deplorable Racist SAH B Woodman

Venus? Last I heard it was as acid and boiling as The Squad being deprived of their Gooberment nummies. A very hostile environment indeed.

Ex-PH2

Next, we’ll see Elon Musk selling tickets to ride to Mars, and it won’t be long before real estate signs go up near the Canali… or was that cannolis?

Will we have to come up with an intergovernmental agreement with the Old Ones. Willis should be all grown up by now; her eggs should have hatched, and Gekko is probably babysitting them, anyway. Maybe the Earth visitors could cook up an agreement to leave the Martians alone while they’re excavating the surface to build the canals for transport.

Slow Joe

Somebody read Ray Bradbury.
Martian Chronicles its so outdated. It didn’t age well.

Ex-PH2

Nah. It’s Heinlein: Red Planet. Much better than Bradbury’s notions of how Mars and Martians will be.

Try reading “Red Planet” and other Heinlein stuff. Makes a lot more sense than Bradbury.

Mason

Buzz puts the “fighter” in fighter pilot.

Can’t wait to see if that little drone they built works. The first flight of an aircraft outside Earth’s atmosphere. Guess they had to come up with something cooler than the rocket-powered hover crane.

Toxic Deplorable Racist SAH B Woodman

Yep. That’s the Big Reveal for this trip. I read about some of the headaches, conflicts and compromises that NASA went through to design that Mars chopper.

Green Thumb

He should have hit him again.

A Proud Infidel®™

I loved the look on that flabby little bitchboy’s face after he got what he deserved, it looked like he was about to cry for his Mommy!

Slow Joe
Slow Joe

cover

Hack Stone

This one is better. At being more cringeworthy.

Mason

Bill Shatner took himself so seriously it hurts.

Anonymous

Buzz is da man! Doesn’t take sh*t.

“You promised me Mars colonies. I got Facebook.” –Aldrin

Hack Stone

Sheila Jackson Lee wants to know if they will be visiting the American flag that Louis Armstrong planted on Mars.

gitarcarver

The launch rumbled the windows of my home. It is always a nice sound.