New propulsion system could take humans to Mars in 45 days

Mars has become a long-term goal for NASA and various space researchers around the world, who believe Mars could become a future human colony. Now, according to NASA calculations, the theoretical travel time for humans to reach Mars is about nine months, with the shortest distance between Earth and Mars being 54.6 million km. But Canadian engineers have devised a new laser propulsion system that they claim will reduce travel time to just 45 days. Let’s take a look at the details.

Humans could reach Mars in 45 days: study

A team of researchers and engineers at Montreal’s McGill University announced they have devised a new laser-propulsion-based spacecraft that could take humans from Earth to Mars in just over six weeks . The researchers are proposing a directed energy propulsion system that would use a large Earth-based laser to jet the spacecraft from Earth to Mars in that amount of time.

Researchers say this system would allow them to use lasers to accelerate spacecraft very quickly near Earth. These laser beams propel the spacecraft deeper into space at speeds comparable to a fraction of the speed of light. After acceleration, the spacecraft is scheduled to arrive at Mars over the next month.

“The application of directed energy to spacecraft mission design is being considered with high-speed transportation to Mars as a design goal: Earth-based laser arrays of unprecedented size (10 m diameter) and power (100 MW) is believed to be possible through the continued development of photonic laser technology,” says a research paper published by McGill University engineers.

The main spacecraft will land on Mars after 45 days, but the remaining spacecraft will return to Earth and be recycled for the next launch .

“A phased array laser of this size and incorporating atmospheric compensation features allows the incident laser to be focused through an expandable reflector into a hydrogen heating chamber to provide laser power to a spacecraft in lunar-star space. Hydrogen propellant is then ejected from the nozzle, achieving a specific impulse of 3000 s. This architecture can be immediately reused by a burnback operation that returns the propulsion unit while within range of the Earth-based laser. It has been shown,” he added.

For those who don’t know, this reduction in travel time can be achieved by using nuclear fission powered rockets, but that comes with radiation risks. This new system appears to solve this problem.

Although this seems like a viable system for reaching Mars or exploring other deep space regions of the universe, no probes currently exist to test this theory.

Elon Musk believes humans can reach Mars within the next six years, while NASA and China aim to send humans there by the 2030s. Therefore, we can expect researchers and engineers to work on this technology by developing and building spacecraft that support laser-based directed energy propulsion systems. what do you think about this? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.