IANS
28 Apr 2015, 22:30 GMT+10
An electric solar wind sail could provide a fundamentally new, economically sustainable way to approach bi-directional manned Mars flights, new research says.
The E-sail is a novel propellantless technology that was invented in Finland in 2006.
The E-sail utilises long, charged tethers to convert natural solar wind momentum flux into spacecraft thrust.
According to Pekka Janhunen, researcher in the Finnish Meteorological Institute, the E-sail could make asteroid mining feasible by providing essentially free logistics in the solar system outside of Earth's magnetosphere.
"After finding a suitable water bearing asteroid, a mining unit could be sent by the E-sail to extract the water from asteroid soil," Janhunen said.
This can be done by heating the material and letting the evolving water vapour condense in a cool container.
When the container is full, it is separated from the mining unit and transported with an E-sail in to the orbit of Mars or Earth, where it is split into hydrogen, oxygen and liquefied.
The liquid hydrogen/oxygen fuel can be used to fill the tanks of manned vehicles travelling between Earth and Mars.
"With cheap propellant available in Mars orbit, there is also the option of fully propulsive landing on Mars which eliminates the need of a massive and expensive heat shield," the authors noted.
The running costs of the E-sail technology are not expected to much exceed those of maintaining the International Space Station, they concluded.
The research appeared in the journal Acta Astronautica.
--Indo-Aisan News Service
na/nt/vm
Get a daily dose of Orlando Echo news through our daily email, its complimentary and keeps you fully up to date with world and business news as well.
Publish news of your business, community or sports group, personnel appointments, major event and more by submitting a news release to Orlando Echo.
More InformationWASHINGTON D.C.: US lawmakers have called on the Department of Energy to release documents detailing attempts by Russian hackers to ...
Photo credit: Ercin Erturk / Anadolu AgencyThe death toll from Monday's massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Turkey and Syria has ...
WASHINGTON D.C.: In a sign of future political battles over record numbers of illegal crossings under Democratic President Joe Biden, ...
MOSCOW, Russia: Russian state-run TASS news agency has reported that a US woman was detained and fined by a Russian ...
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Former President General (retd) Pervez Musharraf died in a Dubai hospital on Sunday at the age of ...
JERUSALEM - Israel on Sunday announced plans to build a new town on the Gaza border .The town, temporarily named ...
ORLANDO, Florida: Union members have voted down a contract proposal covering 45,000 service workers at the Disney World theme park ...
DALLAS, Texas: The Dallas Police have announced that two emperor tamarin monkeys that disappeared earlier this week from the Dallas ...
CHICAGO, Illinois: After an ice storm ravaged states from Texas to West Virginia, this week, airlines canceled over 1,800 flights ...
WASHINGTON D.C.: The US House of Representatives has passed a bill that limits the ability of US Energy Secretary Jennifer ...
The San Jose Sharks ended the season's first half on a positive note and will try to add to that ...
Devin Booker spent the weekend checking all of the final hurdles in his recovery from a left groin injury, playing ...