Elon Musk wants to send a spaceship to Mars in 2019. Musk made the declaration at an appearance on the Westworld panel at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin. As CNBC reports, Musk’s and SpaceX main goal is to build a human colony on Mars and they’re taking steps towards making it a reality.

But Musk did admit that the projection might be a bit too ambitious. “Although sometimes, my timelines are a little, you know…” he said triggering laughter from the audience. The billionaire CEO has become known for making seemingly unattainable deadlines in his role as CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Company.

Musk added that he hopes that going after the “impossible” will inspire other companies and countries to do the same.

Musk’s big gambles have been paying off of late.

In February, his private rocket ship company launched the Falcon Heavy which, according to SpaceX’s website is the most powerful operational rocketin the world “by a factor of two.” SpaceX claims that the rocket could lift 64 metric tons (141,000 lb) which is heavier than a 737 fully loaded and fueled jetliner. The rocket’s payload included a cherry red Tesla roadster owned by Musk himself, “driven” by a crash-test dummy named Starman.

So, with Musk at the helm of SpaceX’s Mars efforts, a colony on Mars seems possible.

Musk told the audience at SXSW that the founders of a Mars colony will have to build basic structures for human habitation and industry from scratch, CNBC reports. There will need to be a power station and glass domes, for example. After the initial foundation is complete, Musk expects “the explosion of entrepreneurial opportunity” to follow since the Mars colony will require “everything from iron foundries to pizza joints.”

As Engadget reports, Musk has teamed up with the creators of the hit HBO show to make a film about the groundbreaking Falcon Heavy test launch. The clips were revealed shortly after his appearance at South by Southwest and are currently trending on YouTube.

If it's quiet solitude and beauty you seek, there is no better place than the surface of Mars. Mars has, long ago, earned its moniker as the red planet, but the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) can transform the subtle differences of soils into a rainbow of colors.

For 10 years, HiRISE has recorded gorgeous- and scientifically valuable - images of Mars. Its photos are so detailed that scientists can examine the planet's features at the scale of just a few feet, including the recent crash site of Europe's Schiaparelli Mars lander.

We combed through 2,054 of the camera's latest pictures, released in August, September, and October, to bring you some of the best - and hopefully help you temporarily escape Earth.

 

A large chasm:

 

Some dark, rust-colored dunes in Russell Crater:

 

NASA might land its next nuclear-powered Mars 2020 rover mission here.

 

The black splotch is where the European Space Agency's Schiaparelli Mars lander crashed. The white specks, pointed out with arrows, are pieces of the lander.

 

Zebra skin. Just kidding, this is a dune field that's speckled with oval-shaped mineral deposits:

 

False-coloring this image makes a giant dune and its gullies look blue.

 

 

A North Pole dune field nicknamed "Kolhar," after Frank Herbert's fictional world.

 

Carbon dioxide that turns from solid to gas carves out these strange shapes at Mars' south pole:

 

A recent impact crater on Mars. (We're pretty sure no one put out a giant cigarette here.)

 

'Spiders' are eruptions of dust caused by the way the Martian surface warms and cools:

 

Cerberus Palus crater showing off layered sediments:

 

NASA keeps an eye of gullies like this for small landslides - and any water that melts in the warm sun to form darker-colored mud.

 

Another gully scientists are having HiRISE monitor:

 

Glacial terrain looks strangely iridescent:

 

A steep slope in Eastern Noctis Labyrinthus:

 

Dunes in a Martian crater. The red bar is an artifact of NASA's image processing:

 

The creation of 'fans' around dunes may help scientists understand seasonal changes on Mars:

 

Another possible landing site for the Mars 2020 mission:

 

Terrain near the Martian equator:

Ceraunius Fossae is a region dominated by volcanic flows and large cracks:

 

Beautiful texture in the region called North Sinus Meridiani:

False colours assigned to certain minerals make Syria Planum an inky blue that's speckled with gold:

A crater on Arcadia Planitia, a large flat region of Mars:

 

Layers in Martian buttes found in a region called West Arabia:

 

A picture of Utopia Planitia, a large plain on Mars:

 

A bright speckle of minerals stands out on Galle (not Gale) Crater:

 

A small but recent impact crater:

 

A possible landing site for the ExoMars 2020 mission, which the European Space Agency is running.

This article was originally published by Business Insider.

On the last day of the International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia, SpaceXCEO Elon Musk took the stage to talk about his company’s BFR project. Moreover, sharing details on how the technology might be utilized to transform long-distance travel on Earth, Musk also clarified how it could aid our off-world activities.

The basic concept behind the BFR is to make a single booster and ship that could substitute the company’s Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Dragon. This would let SpaceX to pour all the assets at present divided across those three crafts into the one project.

Once finished, the BFR could be utilized to launch satellites and space telescopes or clear space debris. It would also be able to dock with the International Space Station (ISS) for the supply of cargo. Most extraordinarily, however, is the BFR’s potential to assist the establishment of off-world colonies.

The present BFR design is big enough to ship up to 100 people and sufficient equipment, which Musk thinks will be instrumental in making a base of operations on the Moon.

 

“It’s 2017, I mean, we should have a lunar base by now,” he said during his IAC presentation. “What the hell is going on?”

Musk’s ambitions go well beyond the Moon, however. SpaceX’s goal of journey to Mars as soon as they have the resources to do so is well known, and in last night’s presentation, Musk shared images of a fully-fledged Martian city. 

Construction on SpaceX’s first ship able to head to Mars is projected to start within the next nine months, and Musk hopes to send a pair of cargo ships to the planet in 2022, however he confessed that this goal is somewhat “aspirational.”

In 2024, SpaceX would send astronauts to the Red Planet on-board two crewed BFRs. These first “settlers” would make a fuel plant that would work as the start of the Martian colony. 

After that, the plan is to construct multiple landing pads, then enlarge out into terraforming and the construction of an urban environment.

Musk’s goals are certainly daring. Though, putting humans on Mars will take some big, bold ideas, and his certainly qualify.

NASA’s human spaceflight director dropped a bombshell, saying they can’t afford a crewed mission to Mars. The agency may instead focus on its Moon plans.

If the mission and special occasion hint at a bright future ahead for Mars and space exploration in general, Curiosity won’t be joined by human explorers anytime soon, at least, not from NASA.

NASA’s made its inspiring Journey to Mars a priority of its space program and, for years, has been developing the capabilities that enable landing humans on the Red Planet sometime in the 2030s.

NASA has regularly communicated its Mars plans, inspiring many people and raising high hopes. A dream which seemed even more feasible by the recent innovations in space technologies and NASA’s own projects, including the new Orion Spacecraft and the new SLS rocket.

Orion Spacecraft | NASA.gov

However, with budget cuts everywhere except defense spending in the U.S., perhaps we should have seen this coming. NASA blatantly cited budgetary reasons for why the Martian journey will not happen anytime soon.

The news broke last month when, at a propulsion meeting of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics, William H. Gerstenmaier, the head of NASA’s human spaceflight, said the agency lacked the budget to carry on its Martian journey.

“… through the 2030s, I can’t put a date on humans on Mars,” said Gerstenmaier.

“And the reason really is … at the budget levels we described, this roughly 2 percent increase, we don’t have the surface systems available for Mars.”

Despite our surprise, naysayers had already expressed doubts about the agency’s Martian plan.

In a report entitled, “Pathways to Exploration”, the National Research Council heavily criticized NASA’s strategy for landing crews on Mars, as, at that time, the funds didn’t align with the work needed and the timeframe.

In a direct reaction to NRC’s report, NASA released a statement where it revalidated its plan and reassured it would continue the path goal toward which it had allegedly made significant progress.

It’s only now that NASA has openly admitted it can’t afford building the spacecraft necessary to land on and ascend from Mars because the Space Launch System (SLS rocket) and Orion spacecraft design and testing had already taken up much of the budget.

SLS rocket with Orion Spacecraft | Nasa.gov

The U.S. Congress allocated NASA $19.5 billion USD as a budget for NASA’s 2017 fiscal year, yet the agency hasn’t specified the exact figure it needs to land crews on Mars.

Experts from within NASA have estimated the cost of a crewed mission to Mars to be $100 billion USD over 30 to 40 years, and more recent estimates take that figure up to $1 trillion USD.

Responding to questions, Gerstenmaier said sending a human mission to Mars is still a goal for the agency–it’s just not a priority anymore.

“… we have the ability with Deep Space Gateway to support an extensive Moon surface program,” Gerstenmaier said. “If we want to stay focused more toward Mars we can keep that.”

The Trump administration, re-launching the National Space Council, officially promised a new era of space exploration that would see “American boots get back to the moon” as well as land on Mars.

NASA seem to be letting its options open to whatever works, financially and politically speaking, but now the moon is a more feasible destination. NASA might have to settle for affording a lunar outpost and one SLS rocket flight per year.

It is now a well-understood fact that Mars once had quite a bit of liquid water on its surface. In fact, according to a recent estimate, a large sea in Mars’ southern hemisphere once held almost 10 time as much water as all of North America’s Great Lakes combined. This sea existed roughly 3.7 billion years ago, and was located in the region known today as the Eridania basin. 

However, a new study based on data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) detected vast mineral deposits at the bottom of this basin, which could be seen as evidence of ancient hot springs. Since this type of hydrothermal activity is believed to be responsible for the emergence of life on Earth, these results could indicate that this basin once hosted life as well.

The study, titled “Ancient Hydrothermal Seafloor Deposits in Eridania Basin on Mars“, just recently appeared in the most prestigious scientific journal Nature Communications. The study was officially led by Joseph Michalski of the Department of Earth Sciences and Laboratory for Space Research at the University of Hong Kong, along with researchers from the Planetary Science Institute, the Natural History Museum in London, and NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

Together, this international team used data obtained by the MRO’s Compact Reconnaissance Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM). Since the MRO reached Mars in 2006, this instrument has been used extensively to search for evidence of mineral residues that form in the presence of water. In this respect, CRISM was essential for documenting how lakes, ponds and rivers once existed on the surface of Mars.

In this case, it identified massive mineral deposits within Mars’ Eridania basin, which lies in a region that has some of the Red Planet’s most ancient exposed crust. The discovery is expected to be a major focal point for scientists seeking to characterize Mars’ once-warm and wet environment. As Paul Niles of NASA’s Johnson Space Center said in a recent NASA press statement:

“Even if we never find evidence that there’s been life on Mars, this site can tell us about the type of environment where life may have begun on Earth. Volcanic activity combined with standing water provided conditions that were likely similar to conditions that existed on Earth at about the same time — when early life was evolving here.”

Today, Mars is a cold, dry place that experiences no volcanic activity. But roughly 3.7 billion years ago, the situation was vastly different. At that time, Mars boasted both flowing and standing bodies of water, which are evidenced by vast fluvial deposits and sedimentary basins.

The Gale Crater is a perfect example of this since it was once a major lake bed, which is why it was selected as the landing site for the Curiosity rover in 2012.

Since Mars had both surface water and volcanic activity during this time, it would have also experienced hydrothermal activity. This occurs when volcanic vents open into standing bodies of water, filling them with hydrated minerals and heat. On Earth, which still has an active crust, evidence of past hydrothermal activity cannot be preserved. But on Mars, where the crust is solid and erosion is minimal, the evidence has been preserved.

“This site gives us a compelling story for a deep, long-lived sea and a deep-sea hydrothermal environment,” Niles said. “It is evocative of the deep-sea hydrothermal environments on Earth, similar to environments where life might be found on other worlds — life that doesn’t need a nice atmosphere or temperate surface, but just rocks, heat and water.”

Based on their study, the researchers estimate that the Eridania basin once held about 210,000 cubic km (50,000 cubic mi) of water. Not only is this nine times more water than all of the Great Lakes combined, it is as much as all the other lakes and seas on ancient Mars combined. In addition, the region also experienced lava flows that existed after the sea is believed to have disappeared.

From the CRISM’s spectrometer data, the team identified deposits of serpentine, talc and carbonate. Combined with the shape and texture of the bedrock layers, they concluded that the sea floor was open to volcanic fissures. Beyond indicating that this region could have once hosted life, this study also adds to the diversity of the wet environments which are once believed to have existed on Mars.

Between evidence of ancient lakes, rivers, groundwater, deltas, seas, and volcanic eruptions beneath ice, scientists now have evidence of volcanic activity that occurred beneath a standing body of water (aka. hot springs) on Mars. This also represents a new category for astrobiological research, and a possible destination for future missions to the Martian surface.

The study of hydrothermal activity is also significant as far as finding sources of extra-terrestrial, like on the moons of Europa, Enceladus, Titan, and elsewhere. In the future, robotic missions are expected to travel to these worlds in order to peak beneath their icy surfaces, investigate their plumes, or venture into their seas (in Titan’s case) to look for the telltale traces of basic life forms.

The study also has significance beyond Mars and could aid in the study of how life began here on Earth. At present, the earliest evidence of terrestrial life comes from seafloor deposits that are similar in origin and age to those found in the Eridania basin. But since the geological record of this period on Earth is poorly preserved, it has been impossible to determine exactly what conditions were like at this time.

Given Mars’ similarities with Earth, and the fact that its geological record has been well-preserved over the past 3 billion years, scientists can look to mineral deposits and other evidence to gauge how natural processes here on Earth allowed for life to form and evolve over time.

It could also advance our understanding of how all the terrestrial planets of the Solar System evolved over billions of years.

Via UniverseToday

There are a lot of hurdles to jump before we send the first human crew to Mars. Fuel for such a long mission adds a lot of weight and expense, and the time it takes to get there leaves astronauts exposed to hazardous doses of radiation. The ultimate dream would be a propulsion system that uses minimal fuel and gets us there as fast as possible. The VASIMR engine could be that dream — but it has some high-profile doubters.

Human Mission to Mars with 10 MW NEP-VASIMR

Franklin Chang Diaz - VASIMR inventor

Until now, the vast majority of rockets we've sent into space have used chemical engines: ones that combine fuel with an oxidizer to create combustion, kind of like your car's engine does. Chemical engines are powerful, but they require a lot of fuel and add a lot of weight. The fuel tank on the Space Shuttle, for instance, weighed 1.7 million pounds (700,000 kilograms). Chemical rockets are currently our best bet for a trip to Mars, which is why most estimate that our first trip will take eight to nine months.

What if you could cut that down to 40 days? Franklin Chang-Díaz, a Ph.D. plasma physicist and astronaut who's tied for having the most space flights ever, is saying that's possible. Instead of using chemical combustion, his VASIMR engine uses a relatively small amount of argon gas that it superheats into plasma. The plasma blasts out the back of the rocket to produce thrust. Best of all, the plasma production and the booster both work on electricity, which could be powered by solar panels.

This solves more than just the weight issue. "A rocket engine is a canister holding high-pressure gas," Chang-Díaz told Forbes. "When you open a hole at one end, the gas squirts out and the rocket goes the other way. The hotter the stuff in the canister, the higher the speed it escapes and the faster the rocket goes. But if it's too hot, it melts the canister."

Not so with VASIMR. It uses superconducting magnets to keep the plasma in place, so it won't melt anything. "The magnetic field becomes the canister, and there is no limit to how hot you can make the plasma," Chang-Díaz says. The hotter the plasma, the faster the engine can go. Unfortunately, for the speeds his team is hoping for, solar panels won't cut it. You're going to need a nuclear power source.

The nuclear power issue is where the critiques of this technology begin. The goal is to use this engine on a crewed mission, after all. Even Elon Musk, one of the biggest proponents for a mission to Mars, is skeptical. " ... it's a very interesting ion engine he's got there, but it requires a big nuclear reactor," he told Forbes. Likewise, while his technology looks great on paper, critics doubt it can achieve the kind of thrust it needs in the real world.

One group that isn't skeptical? NASA. In 2015, they awarded Chang-Díaz's company, Ad Astra, a $9 million contract through its NextSTEP program. To fulfill their side of the deal, Ad Astra needs to make their VASIMR engine fire at 100kW for 100 hours continuously. The plan is coming right along: they've successfully fulfilled every milestone required so far in the three-year contract, and hope to achieve the final goal by summer of 2018.

Via Curiosity.

For the first time in 40 years, NASA researchers have detected atomic oxygen in Mars' atmosphere, thanks to the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), which soars on a plane 13.7 kilometres (45,000 feet) above Earth.

The oxgyen atoms were found in the Martian upper atmosphere - known as the mesosphere - and the discovery could help astronomers identify how gases escaped from the Red Planet long ago. While this is super exciting for our understanding of Mars - humanity’s potential new home - the researchers found only half the amount of oxygen they expected, but this could be the result of variations in the atmosphere.

The last time atomic oxygen was observed in the Martian atmosphere was during the Viking and Mariner missions of the 1970s. So why such a long gap? Well, there’s really one thing to blame: Earth’s blue skies.

Yup, researchers have been at war with Earth’s skies for decades now, because it’s dense and moist enough to make it extremely difficult to accurately see the Universe lying beyond it. So, to overcome this problem, researchers have implemented a bunch of workarounds (like making fake stars with giant lasers), which is where SOFIA comes in.

For the uninitiated, SOFIA is basically a giant aeroplane - a Boeing 747SP jetliner - with a large, 254-cm (100-inch) diameter telescope on it that can soar above most of Earth’s atmosphere to provide a clear picture.

Having such a high vantage point, in addition to specialised equipment that’s designed to ignore Earth’s atmosphere, enabled the team to make their calculations.

While the team hasn’t given any exact figures on just how much atomic oxygen is in the Martian mesosphere, they do state that it was lower than expected. Because of this, the team will continue to use SOFIA to gauge other areas of the planet to ensure this figure isn’t the result of simple variations in the atmosphere.

In other words, it looks like we have to wait for the full results. In the meantime, get excited about the highly speculative possibility of terraforming the Red Planet:

NASA has shared a new image from Mars, showcasing a "tadpole" on the Red Planet. Every now and then, the space agency employs its Curiosity rover and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to capture some amazing features of the Red Planet. This usually includes things of scientific importance or features that have not been spotted before such as the mysterious "stick-like figures" that led many to think that aliens once thrived on Mars.

But this time, NASA decided to have some fun by showcasing a "tadpole". No, not a real larval-stage amphibian, but an unusual impact crater which would have been filled with water several million years ago. The massive site is connected to a snake-like valley carved by once-flowing water on the planet. The whole thing, with the tail-like valley at the back, looks very much similar to a tadpole, according to NASA.

“It is often difficult to differentiate between inlet and outlet channels, but water always flows downhill,” NASA said, describing the image. “In this particular case, we can infer that water is flowing outward because we have the necessary terrain-height information.”

The image was taken by MRO's HiRise camera and shared on Wednesday, 7 February, 2018.

Just a few days back, the agency shared another image from Mars, a breathtaking panoramic shot that looked at Curiosity rover's entire journey since it landed on the planet in 2012. The image even highlighted several features of the impact crater the rover has been exploring till today.

Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster, which launched on top of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy earlier today, is going farther out into the Solar System than originally planned. The car was supposed to be put on a path around the Sun that would take the vehicle out to the distance of Mars’ orbit. But the rocket carrying the car seems to have overshot that trajectory and has put the Tesla in an orbit that extends out into the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Third burn successful. Exceeded Mars orbit and kept going to the Asteroid Belt. pic.twitter.com/bKhRN73WHF

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 7, 2018

After launch, the Tesla cruised through space for a good six hours — a trip that was also live-streamed by SpaceX. This “coast” phase was meant to show off a special orbital maneuver for the US Air Force, before the rocket completed one final engine burn in space and put the car on its final orbit. It looks like that burn might have happened somewhere over Southern California, as some people in the area started reporting sightings of the rocket igniting in the night sky after 9:30PM ET.

But now it seems that engine ignition worked a little too well. SpaceX CEO Musk tweeted out a map of the Roadster’s final orbit after the burn, showing just how far out the car will travel. And it looks like it’s going so far into the asteroid belt that it will get relatively close to the orbit of the dwarf planet Ceres.

It’s unclear what exactly will happen to the car: before the Tesla launched, Musk said that there was an extremely tiny chance that the vehicle would ever hit Mars. But there’s been no clarification about how this new path will affect the car’s chances of running into some other space object. And planetary scientists on Twitter want more answers about the exact orbit to calculate the Tesla’s odds of a collision, and how long it will actually last in deep space.

The Tesla’s journey certainly demonstrates the Falcon Heavy’s capabilities of putting objects into deep space. Plus, some space companies, like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, are working on technologies to mine water from asteroids someday. They might be happy to know that the Falcon Heavy is capable of sending their spacecraft into the asteroid belt.

NASA recently delivered $10 million in funding to Ad Astra Rocket Company of Texas for further development of its Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR), an electromagnetic thruster proficient of propelling a spaceship to Mars in just 39 days. NASA’s funding was part of the “12 Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnership.” Ad Astra’s rocket will travel ten times quicker than today’s chemical rockets while using one-tenth the amount of fuel.

The VASIMR system would cut the trip to Mars by months according to Franklin Chang Diaz, a former MIT student, NASA astronaut, and now CEO of Ad Astra.

Image result for VASIMR Plasma Engine

According to Diaz, “this is like no other rocket that you may have seen in the past. It is a plasma rocket. The VASIMR Rocket is not used for launching things; it is used for things already in orbit. This is called “in-space propulsion.”

 

VASIMR heats plasma, an electrically charged gas, to exceptionally high temperatures using radio waves. The system then offers thrust by funneling the hot plasma out of the back of the engine. According to Diaz, VASIMR will save thousands of gallons of rocket fuel and tens of millions of dollars a year.

In the following video, Diaz explains in great detail the origins of space travel and why the magnetoplasma rocket technology will transform space travel and exploration.