May 24, 2021May 24, 2021 by Cody

May 2021

Missions to Mars with the Starship Could Only Take Three Months June 2, 2025
In a recent paper, UCSB physicist Jack Kingdom identified a trajectory for a rapid transit (90 days) to Mars using SpaceX's Starship. This proposal offers an alternative to mission architectures that rely on nuclear propulsion to reduce transit times.
Traveling to Mars and Ceres Using Lunar Gateway as a Springboard June 1, 2025
How can humanity use the developing Lunar Gateway as an appropriate starting point for advancing human space exploration beyond the Moon? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) hopes to address as a team of researchers evaluated a myriad of ways that Lunar Gateway could be […]
Finding a Better Way to Distinguish Life from Non-Life May 31, 2025
The search for life on other worlds needs a way to sift through the chemistry of their atmospheres. If another species observed Earth to search for life, they'd look for "smoking gun" chemistry in the atmosphere. That includes looking for oxygen, since it is created through photosynthesis by plants and some bacteria. So, the key […]
Advanced Orbital Constellations for Solar Storm Defense May 31, 2025
Solar storms have the potential to cause catastrophic damage. One that occurred around the end of October 2003 (now called the 2003 Halloween Storm) caused an estimated $27B in damages. That number will only increase as humanity has become more reliant on space-based and electrical infrastructure. However, if we could predict when storms would hit […]
Advancing Deep Space Travel with Nuclear Propulsion May 31, 2025
How can fission-powered propulsion help advance deep space exploration, specifically to the outer planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) hopes to address as a pair of researchers from India investigated the financial, logistical, and reliability of using fission […]