An old proverb says that nothing lasts forever in this world, and the same goes on for Earth’s resources. Everything will be running low sooner or later, and that’s why space agencies like NASA are truly hoping to find a new home for us on another planet.
Mars is the most suitable candidate, although it’s far from being so habitable like Earth. We have to be fair and admit that colonizing Mars takes a lot of time, but the first steps need to be taken. And those steps are the simple fact of laying foot on the Red Planet. The journey would still require a lot of fuel, time, and money. But an ingenious plan could make that process a lot less demanding.
Making a Venus flyby is the key
A team of scientists led by John Hopkins planetary geologist Noam Izenberg believes that making a Venus flyby on the way to Mars could save a lot of money and time. The method is not so difficult: using Venus slingshot to whip a spacecraft by using gravitational forces, and such a process could significantly reduce the amount of fuel needed for traveling to Mars.
But the classical way of getting to Mars is by starting the journey the moment when the orbits of both the Red Planet and Earth align. Although this only happens once every 26 months, you have to be masochistic to try to go to Mars otherwise (excepting using the Venus slingshot). The closest distance from Earth to Mars is 54.6 million kilometers, and it occurs when the orbits of the two cosmic objects align. The farthest distance, however, is much bigger: 401 million km.
However, if the astronomers will be using the more ingenious method of the Venus flyby, that will also grant them the chance to make some extra observation of the ‘Earth’s twin’. Ironically enough, Venus resembles Earth far too little, as the surface of our neighboring planet is very hot: 864 degrees Fahrenheit for the average temperature.
Would you propose any other ways of getting to Mars ASAP?
