Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
With a sense of urgency, NASA looks to Mars
Scientists in Idaho could play role in U.S. successes in space
China has repeatedly stunned the U.S. intelligence community in the last five years with rapid progress in its space exploration program, landing a rover on the far side of the moon and completing its very own space station orbiting Earth.
Their advances have established that a new space race is on between Washington and Beijing — this time with the ultimate goal of sending a crewed mission to Mars, each vying to be the first to land humans on another planet.
America’s success may come down to a team of scientists based out of Idaho Falls.
Engineers at the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory are leading a nationwide team of scientists to enhance the capabilities of nuclear thermal propulsion, a technology that NASA hopes will cut the travel time to Mars by half.
It is an ambitious project that could transform the future of human space travel.
“What NASA ultimately is looking for is a nuclear thermal solution to get to Mars,” Sebastian Corbisiero, senior technical advisor for advanced concepts at the Idaho National Laboratory, told Mcclatchy in an interview. “There’s additional technology that needs to be developed to have the higher capability that you need for the Mars mission.”
NASA aims to reach Mars by 2040 and is working on entirely new technologies for the mission, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told Mcclatchy in an interview.
With conventional technology, launch opportunities to Mars come along just once every 26 months, Nelson told Mcclatchy. Missing a launch window could mean a delay of several years, and if something goes wrong midflight, the crew will be on its own in deep space.
“I don’t think it’s practical to go to Mars with conventional technology — conventional propulsion — because it takes us seven to nine months to get there. Once you get there, you’re going to have to stay on the surface maybe a year, maybe two, until the planets realign so you can get back,” Nelson told Mcclatchy. “So I think one of the essentials is we’re going to have to get nuclear electric or nuclear thermal propulsion that will get us there faster.”
The sheer length of the journey means a crew will need more food, equipment, and physical and mental stamina than any previous mission ever tested, Nelson said. A heavy launch vehicle will be necessary to carry an unprecedented payload off the Earth. The longer the journey into deep space, the longer astronauts will be exposed to dangerous levels of microgravity and high doses of radiation. They will steer their final approach to Mars with their vestibular systems out of whack, muscles atrophied, immune systems degraded, eyesight impaired.
Then they will have to land through an atmosphere that is thick enough to kill them but too thin to be used as a break to slow their descent to the surface. Should they succeed, they will be on the other side of the sun with no one there to help them.
Today’s rockets are fueled by conventional combustion engines that require substantial amounts of fuel onboard to power a journey. While a chemical engine could get a spacecraft to Mars, an engine fueled by a nuclear reactor would be far more fuel efficient — heating up freezing hydrogen to high temperatures and using the exhaust as a thruster — and could continue accelerating the vehicle on its long trip to Mars, cutting the travel time.
The Idaho National Laboratory is working to enhance control over the velocity of the engine, increase its efficiency and control its heat generation, Corbisiero said, noting that the lab serves as a government-funded research and development center for national priority projects.
Cutting their travel time could reduce many of the logistical hurdles and risks currently burdening the mission, Nelson said. NASA is also working on radiation shielding that avoids the use of a heavy metal such as steel, and the generation of a centrifugal force in the spacecraft that would create artificial gravity for the crew.