future travell at moon and planets

future travell at moon and planets 

  space exploration program. The fundamental goal of this directive is “…to advance U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests through a robust space exploration program.” In issuing it, the President committed the Nation to a journey of exploring the solar system and beyond. We will return to the Moon in the next decade, then venture further into the solar system, ultimately sending humans to Mars and beyond. He challenged us to establish new and innovative programs to enhance our understanding of the planets, to ask new questions, and to answer questions that are as old as humankind. Our NASA family enthusiastically embraced this directive and the opportunities it presents. And, we immediately began a long-term transformation that will enable us to achieve this goal. The Vision for Space Exploration, published in February 2004, embodies the strategy and guiding principles we will follow in pursuit of the President’s challenge. And, while we have enjoyed many great triumphs during these three years, nothing in my time at NASA makes me more proud than our efforts to transform our Agency and implement the Vision for Space Exploration. This Vision defines us as those who seek to improve the human condition by expanding our knowledge and understanding of who we are, where we came from.

The future of manned space exporation is bright, according to some space experts.

Humans may one day tread across some of the alien worlds that today can be studied only at a distance. Closer to home, private industries like Mars One seek to establish a permanent settlement on the Red Planet. At the Smithsonian Magazine's "The Future is Here Festival" in Washington, D.C. this month, former astronaut Mae Jemison and NASA engineer Adam Steltzner spoke optimistically about the future of manned space exploration.

"Exploration and the curiosity that motivate it are fundamentally human," Steltzner said during the conference.

Mars may be one of the closest planets humans want to colonize, but it certainly isn't the only one. Mae Jemison described the 100-Year Starship project to an interested audience.

Funded by NASA's Ames Research Center and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the 100-Year Starship project aims to develop the tools and technology necessary to build and fly a spaceship to another planetary system within the next 100 years. The program isn't necessarily concerned with building the ship itself as much as it seeks to foster innovation and enthusiasm for interstellar travel.

"The reason we're not on the moon has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with public will and commitment," Jemison said.

As a result, the project, which Jemison heads, seeks to increase public enthusiasm for space as well. The 100-Year Starship program not only includes engineers and astrophysicists, but also artists and science fiction writers.

"It has to be an inclusive journey," she said.

Though many people object to funding the space program when there are humanitarian needs that have to be met on Earth, Jemison points out that such exploration often leads to innovation and unexpected technology that make an impact on Earth-based programs.

"I believe that pursuing an extraordinary tomorrow will create a better world today," she said.

Traveling to another star takes far more time than just developing the necessary technology. Jemison compares the distance to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star, to that between New York City and Los Angeles. If NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft, which launched in 1977, was en route, it would have traveled only 1 mile in the past four decades.

At that rate, it would take 70,000 years to reach Proxima Centauri.

Steltzner served as the lead engineer for . He helped to design and test the rover's one-of-a-kind descent system, but he isn't solely focused on robotic exploration of the solar system.

"I look forward to human footprints on the surface of Mars in my lifetime," he said.

Landing a human on the Red Planet would be far trickier than landing a robot. For instance, Curiosity hit the Martian atmosphere at 15 times the acceleration of gravity (15 gs). Traveling at such extreme speeds would be disastrous for humans, who only experience 1g while standing on Earth's surface. At 15gs, the retinas would detach from human eyes, Steltzner said.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

Space.com Exclusive T-shirt. Available to Populate Mars

Credit: Space.com Store

"Humans should be involved in exploration," Steltzner told the audience.

That form of exploration could come in a number of ways. In addition to kicking up dust on a moon or planet in the solar system, Steltzner suggested another way to spread humans throughout the galaxy.

"Imagine hurtling  to another world, conceivably with the idea of shaping that body," Steltzner said.

Although the idea that bacteria — and life — could hitch a ride on traveling rocks to spread life to other planets is not new, Steltzner suggested a deliberate program that sounds more like science fiction than science fact. Such bacteria could carry our genome and the instructions to reassemble it after landing on a planet (and, one assumes, after the planet has been  to support such life).

Steltzner described the process as "printing human beings organically over time."

Whether or not such a program would be accepted by humans as "succeeding" at space exploration and colonization is another question entirely. Steltzner noted that humans define themselves as more than their genes, and that our experiences and connections also shape us. But in terms of spreading humanity through the galaxy, such seeding might be the easiest and most effective.

In addition to curiosity-motivated exploration, Steltzner pointed out that as long as humans remain on a single planet, we are at risk of extinction when disaster strikes.

"Our real estate portfolio suffers from a concentration of risk," he said.

Such disasters could come from the outside, such as impacts like those that destroyed the dinosaurs or, eventually, the death of the sun (though we have more than 4 billion years to wait for that).

They could also come from within, Steltzner said. A growing population, climate and environmental issues, and keeping our biosphere in check are all problems that humans impact as well as struggle with.

This leads to what Steltzner termed the "terraforming paradox," in which the skills and abilities necessary to change another planet to suit human needs are the same that are necessary to keep Earth suitable and sustainable.

"We won't be able to get that job done [on other planets] until we figure out how to get it done here," he said.

Although long-term terraforming projects may be out, visiting planets in the solar system remains a not-to-distant possibility, and one not hindered by the level of technology.

"Technology didn't slow us down getting to the moon," Steltzner said. "Technology won't slow us down getting to Mars.

Stars are the building blocks of the universe they light up our night sky! Which is spectacular to watch and always make me curious to know more about them?  In Early 19 century we believe that the sun is the only star in the universe, which is fixed at the center of the universe and our solar system is the whole universe. But in the upcoming decades with as our technology advances our knowledge about the universe increases and we came to know that our solar system is just a tip of an iceberg in universe and our Sun is just small yellow dwarf star and nothing compared to the recently discovered stars. So, here I present you the list of 15 Massive stars discovered till date.

Let’s talk about Sun our nearest known star it is mighty 1.4 million km across (870,000 miles). That’s such a huge number that it’s hard to get a sense of scale. The Sun accounts for 99.9% of all the matter in our Solar System. In fact, you could fit one million planet Earths inside the Sun. But nothing compared to the Camps out there.

We can compare them in terms of “solar radius” and “solar mass” to compare largest and smaller stars, so we’ll do the same. A solar radius is 690,000 km (432,000 miles) and 1 solar mass is 2 x 1030 kilograms (4.3 x 1030 pounds).

It is one of the brightest star in earth’s night sky and can be visible from everywhere. It is 200-300 million years old. With naked eye you can perceive it as a single star but in reality it is binary star system consist of two star one is White main Star called Sirius A and a faint white dwarf companion called Sirius B.

The distance between these two stars varies from 8.2 and 31.5 AU. It is located 8.6 light years away from earth, twice massive then Sun and 25 times brighter than Sun. Sirius radius is 1.91 million kilometers which is 71% more than our Sun having surface temperature of 9,940 K.

It is probably every rookie astronaut’s nightmare, and probably even a veteran astronaut’s nightmare…scratch that it’s probably every single astronaut’s biggest fear that their spacecraft is destroyed whilst out on a space walk and they are stranded in space completely alone with no way of contacting Earth! Well that just describes the synopsis for Alfonso Cuarón’s upcoming film Gravity! Due out in October 2013 this ‘out of this world’ film will star Sandra Bullock as the newbie astronaut embarking on her very first shuttle mission and George Clooney as the veteran accompanying her on his final space voyage before retirement. (With a set up like this it is kind of inevitable that it wasn’t going to go smoothly!) After nasty space debris rips through the pair’s Shuttle spacecraft we see them stranded alone in space awaiting whatever fate the dark, vast universe has in store for them! But what does it have in store? What are the realistic dangers of space travel? Let’s  find out, to both spoil the plot before October rolls around and also see what potential hazards await us on those future space holidays we all hope becomes normal practice in the not so distant future.

Space debris is a growing problem with space travel. Space debris can be literally anything, from tiny flecks of paint, a metal bolt right up to a fully-sized defunct satellite. Over 2000 satellites have been launched into space since the first, in 1957. But unlike Sputnik, which returned to Earth when it re-entered the atmosphere after three short months in orbit, some have refused to come home, such as the  which is the oldest satellite still orbiting in Earth’s low orbit after its launch in 1958. But these are usually big objects that can be easily spotted, right? Well imagine the mess if two satellites collided! Two big and easy to spot and track objects now turn into thousands of hazardous pieces ranging in size from big to too tiny to track! In Earth’s orbit now there are roughly 21 000 pieces of space trash bigger than 4 inches (10 cm); approximately 500 000 between 1cm and 10cm and millions smaller than 1cm! You may think it doesn’t matter having all these tiny pieces of space debris floating about but you would be very wrong.  They could be lethal! These tiny scary pieces of trash are “floating” at roughly 4 miles per second (6.6 km/s) , turning a tiny fleck of paint into the equivalent of a pound coin hurtling at a speed of 60 mph (100 km/h)! Back in 1983 the Space Shuttle Challenger felt the wrath of an angry paint fleck on their window but still managed to return home from this mission with the damage. So imagine the damage it could do to the all-important space suits Sandra Bullock and George Clooney will be floating about in! Could a fleck of paint bring a quick end to Gravity?

Not only is man-made space debris a very worrying issue, but so are the natural space debris in and  Meteoroids are pieces of rock and metal floating through space which are often left over pieces of rock from the formation of the Solar System. Micrometeoroids are even smaller pieces of meteoroids, often weighing less than a gram. They may sound small but they cause much of the weathering that happens in space and when these particles all gang up and create high speed, things can get nasty! NASA’s Mariner 10 satellite ran into one of these formidable cosmic clouds which resulted in part of its insulation being ripped off and the impact of the cloud being so great it changed the trajectory of the spacecraft! Imagine an astronaut caught up in such a scary cloud and wonder if a space suit could withstand what a heavy duty satellite couldn’t.