Earlier this week, SpaceX announced that it wants to send an unmanned spacecraft off to Mars by 2018, more than a decade before NASA’s target for sending astronauts off to the Red Planet. He was referring to the Red Dragon – which is an improved version of the Dragon capsule – that already transports material to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA.
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Red Dragon is a spacecraft for crewed and uncrewed but low-priced Mars landing missions.
Meanwhile, Musk offered some information on the potential Mars mission, confirming that the capsule to be used is called the Red Dragon.
But despite that comment, Elon Musk said that their Dragon 2 is capable of sending humans “anywhere in the solar system”.
NASA’s much-awaited Mars mission gets closer to reality with nearly all space agencies collaborating for this historical space mission.
Among those eagerly watching the flight tests was Bobby Braun, an aerospace engineer at Georgia Tech University, who has led a joint research effort with SpaceX and NASA to study supersonic retro-propulsion.
Propulsive landing is key to eventual human missions to the red planet for one simple reason-it scales. “We also learned that NASA has effectively mothballed its technology program for landing large payloads on the surface of Mars”.
For now, the agency is focused on developing the multipurpose deep-space Orion capsule and a heavy-lift rocket, known as the Space Launch System. According to its published prices, the cost of launching a Falcon Heavy into Earth orbit will average $90 million. The project costs NASA about $4 billion per year and does not yet include development of a habitat for deep-space travel or a vehicle to land and then take off again from the surface. And the rocket nailed it this time, unerringly landing upon “Of course I still love you”, which believe it or not, is the name of one of SpaceX’s two drone ships.
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While it might be a setback for NASA, Casey Dreier, Director of Space Policy for the Planetary Society, thinks there’s a lesson to be learned here: when it comes to Mars, you’ve got to have a plan. Take the Curiosity rover. On average, Mars is 140 million miles from Earth, though the planets come to within about 35 million miles every 26 months. Getting them out once the Dragon landed is its own challenge. “As the Dragon descends toward the Martian surface, eight SuperDraco engines embedded in the spacecraft’s hull will fire, slowing down the vehicle’s descent and allowing it to land gently on the ground”.
