The space agency was planning to launch the mission in 2012, but after a review, managers decided to change the target date to April 2023.
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“We are farther down the path to sending humans to Mars than at any point in NASA’s history”, Bolden said Thursday (Sept. 17) during an event at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. that detailed NASA’s manned Mars plans.
NASA announced Wednesday that the Orion spacecraft, the next generation of the agency’s signature spaceship, may not get its first crew until 2023, years after it was originally supposed to fly to the global Space Station and beyond.
In addition, Sam Stephens-of the Space Launch System Development team-comments, “NASA is exploring many technologies to enhance the Space Launch System as it evolves for use in a variety of missions”.
The former space shuttle engines are going to be modified to meet the new requirements of the SLS vehicle mission, which includes software as well as an all-new engine controller resulting from data collected during a July 2015 test of the SLS RS-25 rocket engine.
“We have a lot of work to do to get humans to Mars, but we’ll get there”, Bolden said.
Florida Today wrote that NASA and Lockheed Martin are trying to keep an August 2021 date for the first crewed Orion flight, but space agency officials said that timeline would be hard to keep.
Recently, edible lettuce was grown on the worldwide Space Station as part of an experiment into understanding the production of food crops outside of Earth’s influence.
Furthermore, couple of crewmembers toward the around cultured NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are half-way…
Space.com reported September 18 that Charles Bolden, sitting on a panel of NASA researchers and officials and science fiction author Andy Weir live on NASA TV, revealed positive developments within the space agency that pointed to an actual mission to the Red Planet.
The next NASA Mars rover is set to launch in 2020 with the Mars Oxygen ISRU experiment (MOXIE) that will test how to convert carbon dioxide from the Red Planet into carbon monoxide and breathable oxygen.
“Putting boots on Mars is possibly the most exciting thing humans will ever do”, Bolden said. At the time, it was believed that this would not occur for at least another 30 years. “Orion is a key piece of the flexible architecture that will enable humanity to set foot on the Red Planet, and we are committed to building the spacecraft and other elements necessary to make this a reality”.
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For the past 40 years NASA has been working relentlessly on reaching Mars.
