• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

europe blasts off to the moon ; SOLAR-POWERED SPACECRAFT COULD PAVE WAY FOR MANNED TRIP TO MARS

Posted on: Monday, 18 August 2003, 06:00 CDT

EUROPE is to send a spacecraft to the moon, it was announced today.

The unmanned craft is powered by a revolutionary engine which its designers hope could one day take people to the stars.

The European Space Agency (ESA) Smart-1 spacecraft is to be launched on 4 September from French Guiana. It will use a British- built sensor to analyse the lunar surface and scientists hope it will answer questions about how the moon was created.

The mission could also confirm the suspected existence of water beneath the lunar surface.

The key to the mission is a new development known as an ion engine. This is much smaller than other spacecraft engines and uses solar panels to charge electrically heavy gas atoms. These propel the craft forward as they are pushed away at high speed.

The ion engine begins very slowly, its thrust barely as strong as the force a postcard would produce as it falls through the air. But over long periods of time it can generate much more power and produce high speeds.

Scientists hope it could one day allow manned missions to farawaystars.

Guiseppe Racca, the Smart-1 project manager at ESA, said: "This engine opens up a whole new era of exploration."

The one-square-metre craft will take 18 months to reach the moon.

It will then swoop to within 300km of the lunar surface, using its array of sensors and camera to analyse the lunar surface.

Scientists hope the mission will finally end a row over where the moon came from. Analysing the lunar surface should allow them to tell if the moon is, as they suspect, the remnant of a massive collision between a young earth and another planet.

If this theory is correct, the moon should contain less iron than the earth, something Smart-1's D-CIXS sensor, developed at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Hampshire, can spot.

Bernard Foing, a scientist on the project at ESA, said: "We'll be able to make the first comprehensive inventory of chemical elements in the lunar surface. We'll also carry a multicolour camera, so we will get some new views of the moon.

"As the moon is effectively the daughter of the Earth, we should also get some indications of the early conditions here."

While conventional rocket engines use vast amounts of fuel and can only run for short periods of time, ion engines use very little propellant. Nasa has been running an experimental ion engine continuously for five years.

Although Nasa has already launched a space probe using ion engines, the ESA project will test several advances in the technology, and also be far more manoeuvrable than Nasa's craft.

0 to 70,000mph .

The Smart-1 craft weighs less than a small family car - about 367kg.

.It is no more than a metre square at launch but extends to the length of three Transit vans.

. The push created by the ion engine feels no more powerful than having a postcard dropped onto your hand.

. At its slowest, the craft travels at 0.2mm per second - slower than a snail. But over several years this increases to speeds of up to 70,000mph.

. Smart-1 will get to within 300km of the moon's surface, far closer than previous orbiting probes.

More News in this Category