DailyTech - NASA to Develop New Technology to Help in Future Mars Missions

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Science NASA to Develop New Technology to Help in Future Mars Missions
Michael Hoffman (Blog) - April 13, 2006 5:28 AM

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5 comment(s) - last by bbomb.. on Apr 15 at 9:23 PM

Potential missions to the moon and the planet Mars will be an interesting challenge for NASA

There has been a lot of talk and speculation about NASA sending explorers to the moon and Mars for longer durations of time. These missions will end up taking years which will force NASA to create and implement new technology designed to endure the longer missions. Intelligent computer systems and new engineering designs are absolutely necessary to help keep astronauts alive so far away from Earth. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

The risks of Mars missions are immensely worse than anything faced by the Apollo astronauts of the 1960s. The moon voyagers were never more than 240,000 miles -- a few days' flight -- from Earth. Back then, if anything went wrong, they could scurry back home. That's what the Apollo 13 astronauts did after an onboard explosion, and all three survived.

"Self-healing" microchips is one piece of technology that researchers are working on. Having several copies of the same chip on one tiny superchip would be a cautionary procedure to make sure that instructions can be directed to a working chip. For example, if one core fails, the system will automatically fail over to the next. Another plan is to set all of the computers up in such a fashion so that even if the human operators are unable to complete the task, the computers will still be able to continue the mission.

Critics claim that no matter what technology is researched, NASA is not currently ready to safely launch manned missions to Mars.

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What!?! No comments?

By spindoc on 4/13/2006 5:00:19 PM , Rating: 2

NASA should force the issue of going to Mars and beyond. It is the only reason for developing newer and better forms of propulsion. There has been a lot of news recently about new things that we can see in space. I want to get to them... especially other "Earths".

Let's go!

RE: What!?! No comments?

By ohnnyj on 4/14/2006 1:20:16 AM , Rating: 2

I agree. Our space exploration abilities are anemic to say the least. Space is so vast and we have only been able to get as far as the moon with a human.

I am definetely not smart enough to come up with a new technology and I am not degrading the work of those in (were in) the field. But I just hope that someone or a group of people come up with a way to make space exploration a true reality.

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RE: What!?! No comments?

By bbomb on 4/15/2006 9:23:50 PM , Rating: 2

I did reply but someone bumbed me down to a rating of 0.

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Wait a minute, I've seen this before!

By Jynx980 on 4/14/2006 5:08:14 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
Another plan is to set all of the computers up in such a fashion so that even if the human operators are unable to complete the task, the computers will still be able to continue the mission.