A new type of nuclear thermal propulsion reactor fuel has been successfully tested at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, with hopes that the fuel could take humans to Mars in the not-too-distant future.
Getting to the Red Planet, as things currently stand, will be a long-haul mission. Mars is, on average, 140 million miles from Earth. "Rather than a three-day lunar trip, astronauts bound for Mars would be leaving our planet for roughly three years," NASA explains, adding that such a mission would require the crew to be self-sufficient for long periods of the trip.
"Facing a communication delay of up to 20 minutes one way, the possibility of equipment failures or medical emergencies, and a critical need to ration food and supplies, astronauts must be capable of confronting an array of situations with minimal support from teams on Earth."
NASA – and any others eyeing up the planet for a human mission – would rather cut this travel time down as much as possible to ensure astronaut safety. Apart from anything else, exposing astronauts to higher levels of radiation, free from Earth's protective atmosphere, is not ideal.
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