NASA suggests humans could be on Mars by 2035

At the European Lunar Symposium held at the Museum earlier this month, NASA officials revealed that the Moon could be used as a practice ground for sending humans to Mars within 20 years.

NASA’s chief scientist Dr Ellen Stofan and deputy chief technologist Jim Adams told the assembled scientists that putting humans on Mars is NASA’s ‘primary mission’.

While there have been many robotic missions to Mars in search of water and signs of life, including Curiosity’s current assignment, Dr Stofan believes it's now essential to send human scientists.

‘To unambiguously settle the questions of whether there was life on Mars it will take scientists down on the surface,’ Dr Stofan said.

However, she admitted there is still a long way to go to ready the technologies for such a mission.

With the exception of those who went to the Moon, the majority of people sent into space so far have been in ‘low Earth orbit’, relying on systems on Earth to keep them alive. A journey to Mars would take months.

Fly by

To the disappointment of many of the scientists in the audience, who want to see more lunar exploration, Dr Stofan and Adams said that NASA does not intend to use the Moon’s surface as part of its journey to Mars. They did acknowledge, however, the general importance of research on the surface, both for science and exploration, and said they will work with partners in other space agencies.

Research on the Moon could help work out how to gather resources from the surface of an alien world, such as how to extract water.

Beyond Mars

Adams finished the talk with tantalising inspiration. ‘Where NASA is headed is to the Martian surface in the 2030s,’ he said.

‘It is my dream that once we’ve put boots on Mars and we’ve established that pioneering presence on the surface, we would have already been thinking about where to go next. I hope that you guys will be along for the ride.’

WIRELESS NETWORK ON MOON!!!

ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE

If the unavailability of Internet was the only thing keeping you from visiting the Moon, then here's an important update for you: Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory in coordination with NASA will demonstrate a new data communication technology that provides broadband-like connectivity for transmitting data to and from earth.

The technology will be demoed at a Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics , scheduled to be held next month in California, US. The team will be providing details and overview of the on-orbit performance of their laser-based communication uplink between the Moon and Earth, which has reportedly surpassed the previous record transmission speed by a factor of 4,800.

“This will be the first time that we present both the implementation overview and how well it actually worked," said Mark Stevens of MIT Lincoln Laboratory. "The on-orbit performance was excellent and close to what we'd predicted , giving us confidence that we have a good understanding of the underlying physics," Stevens added.

The MIT team had last year showed their Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) transmitted data between the Moon and Earth at a download rate of 622 Mbps per second, which is said to be faster than any radio frequency system. The team also managed to transmit data from the Earth to the Moon at 19.44 Mbps per second, a factor of 4,800 times speedier than the best RF uplink ever used.

Computer-aided design drawing of the optical module on the satellite showing the telescope and gimbal (pivoted support). Credit: NASA.

"LLCD also demonstrated the ability to 'hand-off' the laser connection from one ground station to another, just as a cellphone does a hand-off from one cell tower to another. An additional achievement was the ability to operate LLCD without using LADEE's radio at all," read a statement from NASA last year.

The ground terminal, with the sun reflecting off of the solar windows of the uplink telescopes. Credit: Robert LaFon, NASA/GSFC.

"Communicating at high data rates from Earth to the Moon with laser beams is challenging because of the 400,000km distance spreading out the light beam," Stevens said. "It's doubly difficult going through the atmosphere, because turbulence can bend light--causing rapid fading or dropouts of the signal at the receiver," said Stevens.

To ensure smooth signal over such a massive distance, the team used several techniques to accomplish error-free performance over several optical challenging conditions in both darkness and bright conditions. A ground terminal, set up at in New Mexico, uses four separate telescopes to send the uplink signal to the Moon. Each telescope is about 6 inches in diameter and fed by a laser transmitter that sends information coded as pulses of invisible infrared light.

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