Mars is very much en vogue right now. NASA is focused on exploring Mars, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars, and astronomers all around the world want to learn more about Earth’s nearest neighbor. The discovery earlier this month that the planet is hiding massive water ice reserves just beneath its surface could have far-reaching ramifications, possibly giving future humans on Mars easy access to water supplies. Of course, humans would need more than water to survive on Mars.
NASA on Thursday unveiled a device called Kilopower, a compact nuclear reactor capable of reliably generating power. In a guest post on Space.com, the Department of Energy’s Kilopower project lead Patrick McClure and Los Alamos National Laboratory’s chief reactor designer David Poston explained how the solution works.
“The brilliance of Kilopower is its simplicity: With few moving parts, it uses heat-pipe technology, invented at Los Alamos way back in 1963, to power a Stirling engine,” the two wrote. “Here’s how it works: The sealed tube in the heat pipe circulates a fluid around the reactor, picking up the heat and carrying it to the Stirling engine. There, the heat energy pressurizes gas to drive a piston coupled to a motor that generates electricity. Using the two devices in tandem creates a simple, reliable electric power supply that can be adapted for space applications, including human exploration and space science missions to outer planetary bodies like the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.”
The researchers have created different versions of the portable Kilopower reactor that generate different amounts of power. They range from 1 kilowatt, which they say is only enough to power a household toaster, to 10 kilowatts in size. According to McClure and Poston, about 40 kW would be needed to effectively run a habitat on Mars and generate fuel. – READ MORE
[give_form id=”79809″] [divider][/divider]It’s been a generally-agreed fact for years that Mars is hiding significant ice deposits. But the size and location of the frozen water has been uncertain, and no robotic probes have yet been able to find or extract any samples from the surface of our planetary neighbor.
But according to researchers who have analyzed imagery from two orbiting satellites, a number of sites on the planet are harboring huge “cliffs” of ice, exposed on the surface and hundreds of feet tall.
The researchers used photos from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to locate exposed ice from sections of the surface where hillsides have naturally eroded. The erosion has created huge cliffs of ice, up to 300 feet tall in some cases. – READ MORE
[give_form id=”79809″] [divider][/divider]President Trump on Monday is expected to sign a directive meant to send American astronauts back to the moon, with an eye on eventually reaching Mars
A White House schedule for Trump includes a 3 p.m. “signing ceremony for Space Policy Directive 1.”
The directive orders NASA “to lead an innovative space exploration program to send American astronauts back to the Moon, and eventually Mars,” spokesman Hogan Gidley later said in a statement.
Gidley added that Trump’s decision is based on recommendations from the National Space Council, which is chaired by Vice President Pence.
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