It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
While NASA has officially given up its plans to send humans back to the surface of the moon anytime soon, a contractor is proposing a mission to send a crew to a stationary spot in orbit over the far side of Earth's neighbor. Lockheed Martin has begun pitching an L2-Farside Mission using its Orion spacecraft under development.
"We have come up with a sequence of missions that we've named 'Stepping Stones,' which begins with flights in low Earth orbit and incrementally builds towards a human mission to the moons of Mars in the 2030s," said Josh Hopkins of Lockheed Martin's Human Spaceflight Advanced Programs department.
From a halo orbit around that L2 point, a crew would control robots on the lunar surface. Teleoperated science tasks include snagging rock specimens for return to Earth from the moon's South Pole-Aitken basin – one of the largest, deepest, and oldest craters in the solar system – as well as deploy a radio telescope array on the farside.
According to a Lockheed Martin white paper on the proposed concept, a number of benefits stem from such a mission:
- Astronauts on an L2-Farside mission would travel 15 percent farther from Earth than the Apollo astronauts did - and spend almost three times longer in deep space.
- Each flight would prove out the Orion capsule's life support systems for one-month duration missions before attempting a six-month-long asteroid mission
- It would demonstrate the high speed reentry capability needed for return from the moon or deep space – 40 percent to 50 percent faster than reentry from low-Earth orbit.
- The mission would measure astronauts' radiation dose from cosmic rays and solar flares to verify that Orion provides sufficient protection, as it is designed to do. Currently the medical effects of deep space radiation are not well understood, so a one-month mission would improve our understanding without exposing astronauts to excessive risk.
Originally posted by DutchBigBoy
How long will it take for the TPTB to change the contractors plans?
Originally posted by DerbyCityLights
I noticed that the op's article says "moons of Mars" and not Mars itself. Why go to the Moons and not just to Mars? If you are going to spend billions getting there, it would seem logical to make as few stops as possible along the way. Im glad to see the interest but I am not sure about their roadmap.
Originally posted by Soylent Green Is People
Originally posted by DerbyCityLights
I noticed that the op's article says "moons of Mars" and not Mars itself. Why go to the Moons and not just to Mars? If you are going to spend billions getting there, it would seem logical to make as few stops as possible along the way. Im glad to see the interest but I am not sure about their roadmap.
I've heard this before, and wondered the same thing.
The explanation I heard is that the moons of Mars have far less gravity, so the amount of fuel required for the return mission (blasting off from one of those moons) would be FAR less than if we tried to launch from the surface of Mars. Far less fuel = far less weight = much cheaper mission. Supposedly, a human could possibly do more research of Mars from one of Mars' moons than a robotic probe sent to Mars itself and controlled from here.
Of course, any mission to Phobos would most likely be followed up by an eventual manned trip to Mars itself someday.
LA Times - Phobos Mission
New Scientist - Destination Phobos
edit on 11/24/2010 by Soylent Green Is People because: (no reason given)
Originally posted by Aim64C
reply to post by Arken
Interestingly enough, Mars has a greater effective gravity than Earth. Launching a rocket from Mars (especially given its denser atmosphere) would require all of the launch facilities and fuel consumed during a launch from Earth.
Astronauts to be sent to the dark side of the moon for first time in 40 years in pre-Mars mission
Originally posted by Xeven
There is bound to be gold up there which in itself could pay for the mission not to mention large quantities of Helium 3 would sell for billions as you would have the only large supply available.