May
17
New, Shorter Route Found to Mars?
“This was a surprise for me — I was not looking for this.” — Marcelo de Oliveira Souza, cosmologist at State University of Northern Rio de Janeiro
There are many factors that slow our “on-site” study of other planets, moons, etc. Incredible distances, for example, mean very long flight times. Then you have to factor in obstacles like asteroids, the trajectories of said asteroids, the orbits of the planets and moons involved, etc. And, of course, we are restricted by our current technological limitations and the money it takes to fund relevant research and missions.
So, as much as people — including noted space-enthusiast and multi-billionaire Elon Musk — want to get working on a habitable colony on Mars (~140 million miles from Earth), one big drawback is that it takes roughly 7-10 months to get there via even a relatively direct route. (E.g., NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission took ~7.5 months to reach Mars, whereas NASA’s MAVEN mission took ~10 months.) But then,
“Because Earth and Mars align for fuel-efficient transfers only every 26 months, astronauts must wait for a return window, stretching a full round trip to nearly three years.”
However, thanks to a recent discovery by Brazilian cosmologist Marcelo De Oliveira Souza, those travel times may — in the near future — be greatly reduced.
As described in the journal Acta Astronautica, Souza first stumbled upon something interesting back in 2015 — namely, a particular near-Earth asteroid that “followed a rare path crossing both Earth’s and Mars’ orbital zones.” As MSN.com summarized it,
“Although later measurements refined the asteroid’s true trajectory, its initial geometry during the October 2020 opposition — when Earth and Mars were aligned on the same side of the sun, and closest together in their orbits — hinted at the possibility of “ultra-short” routes between the two planets….
Souza’s calculations showed that a very fast, roughly 34-day trip from Earth to Mars is geometrically possible if a spacecraft follows a path similar to the asteroid’s early orbital plane.
However, such a trajectory would require departure speeds of around 32.5 kilometers per second, well beyond current rocket capabilities, and a spacecraft would arrive at Mars traveling around 64,800 mph (108,000 km/h) — too fast for existing landing systems to handle safely.”
Souza calculated future Mars oppositions in 2027, 2029, and 2031, and discovered that “the 2031 alignment offered a viable opportunity for rapid travel using near-term technology. In that window, a round-trip mission from Earth to Mars could be completed in just 153 days, or roughly five months, according to the study.”
The MSN article noted that “[t]he required velocities are comparable to those achieved by missions such as New Horizons” and “[s]uch high-speed trajectories could be within the reach of next-generation rockets such as SpaceX’s Starship or Blue Origin’s New Glenn.”
If you are curious about this discovery and its implications, MSN has two articles on it: here and here. Also, here’s the journal article (which I did not read) with all of the math, etc.
