How NASA Research Is Preparing Mankind For An Potential Interstellar-Like Scenario

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Space exploration will once again be featured on the big screen with this week’s release of the Paramount Pictures movie Interstellar, directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway.
In the film, a team of astronauts are charged with finding a new home for humanity after war, famine, plague and climate change wreak havoc on the Earth. In real life, however, NASA scientists, engineers and astronauts are working hard to make sure our home planet never meets such a fate, while also working hard to explore the universe around us, just in case we ever do need to find a new home out there amongst the stars.
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“The cosmos beckons us to explore farther from home, expanding human presence deeper into the solar system and beyond. For thousands of years we’ve wondered if we could find another home among the stars. We’re right on the cusp of answering that question,” the US space agency explained in a statement released Friday.
“If you step outside on a very dark night you may be lucky enough to see many of the 2,000 stars visible to the human eye,” NASA added. “They’re but a fraction of the billions of stars in our galaxy and the innumerable galaxies surrounding us. Multiple NASA missions are helping us extend humanity’s senses and capture starlight to help us better understand our place in the universe.”
For example, the agency said that largely visible light telescopes such as Hubble have led scientists to learn that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, and infrared missions (which include Spitzer, SOFIA and WISE) have allowed NASA personnel to analyze the stellar nurseries where new stars are formed from gases.
Furthermore, missions such as Chandra, Fermi and NuSTAR have made it possible to locate and witness the final moments of massive stars, which are capable of releasing enormous amounts of energy through supernovas and form black holes, and over the past few years new advances of technology (including the Kepler Space Telescope) have allowed researchers to fully understand just how many other planets there could be outside our solar system.
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Kepler, which is currently located from 64 million miles, examined a small region of a sky for a four-year period, measuring the change in brightness that occurred when planets passed in front of a star in its line of view. Based on those observations, the telescope was able to determine the likelihood that other planets orbit stars, and thanks to its findings, NASA was able to discover that it was possible that every star could have at least one planet.
“Solar systems surround us in our galaxy and are strewn throughout the myriad galaxies we see,” the space agency noted. “Though we have not yet found a planet exactly like Earth, the implications of the Kepler findings are staggering – there may very well be many worlds much like our own for future generations to explore.”
NASA also said that they are developing the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which will search 200,000 nearby stars to find planets approximately the same size as Earth. Currently, the distance between stars is too vast for spacecraft to traverse using existing methods of propulsion, the agency said, with only Voyager 1 poised to depart the solar system in the near future – and it won’t encounter another star for a minimum of 40,000 years.
“The near-term future of exploration should be cause for much excitement, though, as humans and robotic spacecraft pioneer the path Voyager traveled, deeper into our solar system, where extra-terrestrial life may exist, and where humans could one day thrive,” NASA said, noting that life requires both heat and water in order to survive.
“On our watery planet, we find life teeming at even the most extreme temperatures,” the organization added. “Scientists are eager to know if evidence of microbial life exists on other planets and moons within our reach. On Jupiter’s moon Europa, for example, there is a temperate ocean caught between a volcanic core and icy surface. Just as life exists in the dark, hot reaches of Earth’s ocean, so too could it exist on Europa, waiting to be discovered.”
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While a potential mission to Europa is currently being considered for next decade, the majority of the search for extraterrestrial life is currently focusing on Mars, where a fleet of NASA satellites and spacecraft are currently analyzing the surface and atmosphere in order to determine if conditions on the Red Planet had once been suitable for life. While the planet’s surface water and atmosphere have diminished significantly, NASA noted that evidence of past like could still be uncovered, and Mars could even become a future some for human space travelers.
“This Journey to Mars begins aboard the International Space Station where astronauts 250 miles above Earth are learning how to live in space for long durations – key knowledge needed for round trips to Mars, which could take 500 days or more,” NASA explained. “A new generation of US commercial spacecraft and rockets are supplying the space station and will soon launch astronauts once again from US soil.”
Other current and upcoming NASA missions include: the Orion Spacecraft, which will be used for future manned missions and will undergo its first test flight in December; New Horizons, which will study Pluto during a fly-by of the icy world in 2015; the James Webb Space Telescope, which will detect light from the universe’s first stars after launching in 2018; and a robotic spacecraft that will capture and redirect an asteroid in 2019.
“In 2020, we’ll send a new rover to Mars, to follow in the footsteps of Curiosity, search for ancient Martian life, and pave the way for future human explorers. In 2021, SLS and Orion will launch humans on the first crewed mission of the combined system,” the organization explained.
“In the mid-2020s, astronauts will explore an asteroid redirected to an orbit around the moon, and return home with samples that could hold clues to the origins of the solar system and life on Earth. In doing so, those astronauts will travel farther into the solar system than anyone has ever been,” NASA added. “It’s an exciting time as NASA reaches new heights to reveal the unknown and benefit humankind.”
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