NASA is considering launching tasks to Mars early next year in an attempt to accelerate her plan to land astronauts on the Red Planet. The sudden shift of focus comes less than a week after the US administration issued its proposed budget for the agency, which emphasizes the national goal of landing on the human being on Mars.
The Space Agency explores the possibility of launching multiple tasks to Mars in the very near future to accelerate the timeline of the human mission, Politico I mentioned. “We are evaluating every opportunity, including launch windows in 2026 and 2028, to test the techniques that will get humans on Mars,” and NASA spokeswoman Bethani Stephen in Politico. The fine details of these missions, such as the missile and the beneficial load concerned.
Last Friday, the administration of President Donald Trump It issued a proposed budget for NASA fiscal year 2026That highlighted “the goals of returning to the moon in front of China and putting a man on Mars.” The proposed budget is a 24 % reduction by NASA’s current budget of $ 24.8 billion for the year 2025, and most programs face budget discounts for the NASA human space exploration budget, which received an additional 647 million dollars compared to the 2025 budget. The Trump administration has allocated an additional billion dollars in new investments for programs that focus on Mars. The proposed budget will also do the mission of Mars from Mars, indicating that a rock -sampling plan from Mars can be implemented through a fleet of robots through a human mission instead.
If NASA will launch a task to Mars by next year, the Spacex Megarock vehicle will be the most appropriate for the task. The founder of Spacex and CEO Elon Musk has an installation on Mars, and often cares about his plans to colonize the planet until humans become a multi -cylinder type. Musk recently I mentioned This central vehicle is scheduled to be launched to Mars by the end of 2026, with human procedures to the Red Planet that takes place early in 2029.
It seems that the Musk obsession with Mars has translated into a change in the direction of NASA under Trump’s management, which is a close ally billionaire. Starship had a total of eight test trips so far, and meT has made a steady progress. This week, the Federal Aviation Administration Granted Spacex license to Launch up to 25 times a year from Starbase, A big leap from the previous limit of only five annual launch operations.
This development will help move the mouth, although it is not clear whether it will be ready for Mars by next year. Launching a mission to Mars is not something that you can plan for a whim – there are many factors that must be taken into account, such as preparing for missiles and tropical mechanics.
The Spacex Spacex missile is supposed to be a launching way to choose for these tasks. In order to reach Mars, the spacecraft needs to get rid of complex tropical fuel to help it reach beyond Earth orbit. This is not a small thing, and Spacex is still far from showing that ability in space.
More importantly, missions are often tasted to Mars based on when the Earth and the Red Planet are close, to reduce time and costs of missions to the red planet. The economist also explained in a conversation condition:
The only difficulty arises from the need to reach such a point at the same time as Mars itself does. To obtain this right requires that the earth is about 45 degrees behind Mars at the time of launch, a situation that does not come around only two years-and this means only twice in any presidential period of only four years. If humans are launched to Mars before the time of Mr. Trump’s constitutional time, they will have to leave the Earth’s orbit during the opportunity to open at the end of 2028.
Consequently, the task is not very risky, and at least one non -savior is a drop to happen first – and it will have to be launched during the window that begins in late 2026, according to The ECONOMIST.
It is an open question about whether NASA and its partners can face these challenges. Regardless, the race to Mars is heating – realism or not.
https://gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2025/04/Starship-Flight-8.jpeg
Source link