2023 BU will pass over the southern tip of South America on January 26. Illustration: NASA/JPL-Caltech
An asteroid is on its way to Earth, but don’t worry—the end is not here. The asteroid, dubbed 2023 BU, is about the size of a box truck and is not projected to impact our planet during its flyby on Thursday. However, it will be “one of the closest approaches by a known near-Earth object ever recorded,” according to a NASA scientist.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab said in a release on Wednesday that 2023 BU is about 11.5 to 28 feet (3.5 to 8.5 meters) wide, which is small enough to mostly burn up in our atmosphere if it were to hit us. But NASA doesn’t expect 2023 BU to slam into the planet; instead the asteroid will pass about 2,200 miles (3,600 kilometers) above the southern tip of South America on Thursday, January 26, at 4:32 p.m. PST. NASA was able to calculate the position and trajectory of the asteroid using Near Earth Asteroid Scout, a hazard assessment system.
“Scout quickly ruled out 2023 BU as an impactor, but despite the very few observations, it was nonetheless able to predict that the asteroid would make an extraordinarily close approach with Earth,” said Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory who developed Scout. “In fact, this is one of the closest approaches by a known near-Earth object ever recorded.”
2023 BU is passing closer to us then some of the satellites orbiting our planet, and Earth’s gravity is changing the asteroid’s path around the Sun from circular to more elongated. The asteroid was discovered by Gennadiy Borisov at the MARGO observatory in Nauchnyi, Crimea on January 21. Since then, observatories across the planet have also detected 2023 BU, leading to robust models of the asteroid’s path and potential hazard.
Astronomers’ detection of and prompt study of 2023 BU shows how robust humanity’s asteroid detection workflow is becoming. Our ability to eventually defend our planet is advancing, too, after the successful DART test mission to deflect asteroid last October.
I aimed a 1,500-foot iron asteroid traveling at 38,000 miles per hour with a 45-degree impact angle at Gizmodo’s office in Midtown, Manhattan.Screenshot: Gizmodo/Neal.Fun
Hundreds of thousands of asteroids lurk in our solar system, and while space agencies track many of them, there’s always the chance that one will suddenly appear on a collision course with Earth. A new app on the website Neal.fun demonstrates what could happen if one smacked into any part of the planet.
Neal Agarwal developed Asteroid Simulator to show the potentially extreme local effects of different kinds of asteroids. The first step is to pick your asteroid, with choices of iron, stone, carbon, and gold, or even an icy comet. The asteroid’s diameter can be set up to 1 mile (1.6 kilometers); its speed can be anywhere from 1,000 to 250,000 miles per hour; and the impact angle can be set up to 90 degrees. Once you select a strike location on a global map, prepare for chaos.
“I grew up watching disaster movies like Deep Impact and Armageddon, and so I always wanted to make a tool that would let me visualize my own asteroid impact scenarios,” Agarwal said to Gizmodo in an email. “I think this tool is for anyone who loves playing out ‘what-if’ scenarios in their head. The math and physics behind the simulation is based on research papers by Dr. Gareth Collins and Dr. Clemens Rumpf who both study asteroid impacts.”
Once you’ve programmed the asteroid and launched it at your desired target, Asteroid Simulator will walk you through the devastation. First, it’ll show you the width and depth of the crater, the number of people vaporized by the impact, and how much energy was released. It will then walk you through the size and effects of the fireball, shock wave, wind speed, and earthquake generated by the asteroid.
NASA has its eyes on more than 19,000 near-Earth asteroids. While no known space rock poses an imminent threat to Earth, events like the 2013 Chelyabinsk impact in Russia remind us of the need for robust planetary defense. Just this year, NASA tested an asteroid deflection strategy via its DART spacecraft, to resounding success.
Composite image of the Didymos-Dimorphos system taken on November 30, showing its new ejecta tail. Image: Magdalena Ridge Observatory/NM Tech
Scientists continue to pore over the results of NASA’s stunningly successful DART test to deflect a harmless asteroid. As the latest findings suggest, the recoil created by the blast of debris spewing out from Dimorphos after impact was significant, further boosting the spacecraft’s influence on the asteroid.
NASA’s fridge-sized spacecraft smashed into the 535-foot-long (163-meter) Dimorphos on September 26, shortening its orbit around its larger partner, Didymos, by a whopping 33 minutes. That equates to several dozen feet, demonstrating the feasibility of using kinetic impactors as a means to deflect threatening asteroids.
A stunning side-effect of the test were the gigantic and complex plumes that emanated from the asteroid after impact. The Didymos-Dimorphos system, located 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth, even sprouted a long tail in the wake of the experiment. DART, short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, had a profound impact on Dimorphos, kicking up a surprising amount of debris, or “ejecta,” in the parlance of planetary scientists.
Animated image showing changes to the Didymos-Dimorphos system in the first month following DART’s impact. Gif: University of Canterbury Ōtehīwai Mt. John Observatory/UCNZ
Dimorphos, as we learned, is a rubble pile asteroid, as opposed to it being a dense, tightly packed rocky body. This undoubtedly contributed to the excessive amount of ejected debris, but scientists weren’t entirely sure how much debris the asteroid shed as a result of the impact. Preliminary findings presented on Thursday at the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting in Chicago are casting new light on this and other aspects of the DART mission.
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Not only did DART kick up tons of ejecta, it also triggered a recoil effect that further served to nudge the asteroid in the desired direction, as Andy Rivkin, DART investigation team lead, explained at the meeting. “We got a lot of bang for the buck,” he told BBC News.
Indeed, had Dimorphos been a more compact body, the same level of recoil likely wouldn’t have happened. “If you blast material off the target then you have a recoil force,” explained DART mission scientist Andy Cheng from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, who also spoke at the meeting. The resulting recoil is analogous to letting go of a balloon; as the air rushes out, it pushes the balloon in the opposite direction. In the case of Dimorphos, the stream of ejecta served as the air coming out of the balloon, which likewise pushed the asteroid in the opposite direction.
Planetary scientists are starting to get a sense as to how much debris got displaced. DART, traveling at 14,000 miles per hour (22,500 km/hour), struck with enough force to spill over 2 million pounds of material into the void. That’s enough to fill around six or seven rail cars, NASA said in a statement. That estimate might actually be on the low side, and the true figure could possibly be 10 times higher, Rivkin said at the meeting.
The scientists assigned DART’s momentum factor, known as “beta,” a value of 3.6, meaning that the momentum transferred into Dimorphos was 3.6 times greater than an impact event that produced no ejecta plume. “The result of that recoil force is that you put more momentum into the target, and you end up with a bigger deflection,” Cheng told reporters. “If you’re trying to save the Earth, this makes a big difference.”
That’s a good point, as those values will dictate the parameters for an actual mission to deflect a legitimately dangerous asteroid. Cheng and his colleagues will now use these results to infer the beta values of other asteroids, a task that will require a deeper understanding of an object’s density, composition, porosity, and other parameters. The scientists are also hoping to figure out the degree to which DART’s initial hit moved the asteroid and how much of its movement happened on account of the recoil.
The speakers also produced another figure—the length of the tail, or ejecta plume, that formed in the wake of the impact. According to Rivkin, Dimorophos sprouted a tail measuring 18,600 miles (30,000 km) long.
“Impacting the asteroid was just the start,” Tom Statler, the program scientist for DART and a presenter at the meeting, said in the statement. “Now we use the observations to study what these bodies are made of and how they were formed—as well as how to defend our planet should there ever be an asteroid headed our way.”
Last week, NASA’s DART spacecraft intentionally crashed into Dimorphos, a petite moonlet orbiting the larger asteroid Didymos. Now, a telescope on the ground in Chile has imaged the massive plume created by the impact in the days following the encounter.
The crash was a planetary defense test; NASA is seeking to know if a kinetic impactor can change the trajectory of an Earth-bound space rock, should we ever spot a large one on a collision course with us. The space agency’s Center for Near Earth Objects exists to monitor the status of these objects and their orbits.
NASA is still sifting through the data of the collision to determine if the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, altered Dimorphos’s orbital trajectory around its larger companion, but images of the impact are coming thick and fast from all the telescopic lenses turned towards the historic event.
The latest images come from the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) Telescope in Chile, operated by NOIRLab. The SOAR telescope is located in the foothills of the Andes, an arid environment with clear, light-free skies that make the region ideal for ground-based telescopes.
The expanding dust trail from the collision is clearly visible, stretching to the right corner of the image. According to a NOIRLab release, the debris trail stretches about 6000 miles (10,000 kilometers) from the point of impact. Said Teddy Kareta, an astronomer at Lowell Observatory who was involved with the observation, in the release: “It is amazing how clearly we were able to capture the structure and extent of the aftermath in the days following the impact.”
NASA scientists have yet to come out with their determination on DART’s success, but the impact is a success in itself. Soon to come are further findings about the event: exactly how much material from Didymos was expelled, how pulverized the material was, and how fast it may have been kicked up. The data could shed important light on the effect that kinetic impactors might have on “rubble pile” asteroids, which Dimorphos appears to be. Rubble pile asteroids feature loosely bound conglomerations of surface material, which could explain these dramatic post-impact views of the moonlet.
Nearby in Chile, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s sky survey will soon begin. Among its charges are assessing potentially hazardous objects near Earth—though considering the recent test, perhaps the asteroids should be worried about us.
More: Ground Telescopes Capture Jaw-Dropping Views of DART Asteroid Impact
Depiction of DART (left) and LICIACube (right). Image: Italian Space Agency
DART won’t survive its mission to deflect an asteroid, but the recently deployed LICIACube—a tiny probe equipped with cameras—will document the encounter in gory detail.
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is the space agency’s first demonstration of a defense strategy to protect against threatening asteroids. The 1,376-pound spacecraft is scheduled to smash into Dimorphos—the junior member of the Didymos binary asteroid system—on September 26 at 7:14 p.m. ET. Dimorphos poses no threat to Earth, but the experiment, should it work, will slightly nudge the moonlet from its current trajectory. In the future, a similar strategy could be used to deflect a genuinely threatening asteroid.
DART will not survive the encounter, but its onboard camera, called DRACO (Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation), will provide a first-person perspective of the collision. Nearby, LICIACube (pronounced LEE-cha-cube) will use its two onboard cameras to document the impact and its aftermath.
DART team engineers inspecting LICIACube before its installation into DART.Photo: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Ed Whitman
Controllers issued a command on September 12 for DART to release the 31-pound (14-kilogram) LICIACube, which it had been carrying since its launch on November 24, 2021. A signal confirming the deployment arrived one hour later, much to the delight of Simone Pirrotta, LICIACube project manager for the Italian Space Agency.
“We are so excited for this—the first time an Italian team is operating its national spacecraft in deep space,” he said in a statement. “The whole team is fully involved in the activities, monitoring the satellite status and preparing the approaching phase to the asteroid’s flyby.”
LICIACube, short for Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging Asteroids, was designed and built by Argotec, an Italian aerospace company, with contributions from the National Institute of Astrophysics and the Universities of Bologna and Milan. The tiny probe—built from a 6-unit cubesat bus—is equipped with two optical cameras, named LUKE (LICIACube Unit Key Explorer) and LEIA (LICIACube Explorer Imaging for Asteroid). Together, LUKE and LEIA will collect data to confirm the success of the DART mission and to inform future models of similar tests done with kinetic impactors.
Pirrotta and his colleagues are currently calibrating LICIACube by capturing dynamic images of distant celestial bodies. The tiny probe will receive a series of maneuvering commands just prior to DART’s fatal rendezvous with the 520-foot-wide (160-meter) Dimorphos. NASA’s spacecraft, traveling at speeds reaching 15,000 miles per hour (24,000 kilometers per hour), will be annihilated by the impact. LICIACube will travel past the asteroid roughly three minutes after the encounter to confirm the impact, document the spread of the resulting dust plume, attempt to capture an image of the newly formed crater, and document the opposite side of Dimorphos, which DART will never see.
“We expect to receive the first full-frame images and to process them a couple of days after DART’s impact,” Pirrotta said. We’ll then use them to confirm impact and to add relevant information about the generated plume—the real precious value of our photos.”
By looking at the debris plume and impact crater, scientists hope to gain a better understanding of the asteroid’s structure and surface material. Observations of Dimorphos’s non-impacted hemisphere will improve estimates of the moonlet’s dimensions and volume.
NASA and ESA are planning to document the impact from afar. DART, should it be successful, will alter the speed of Dimorphos in its orbit around the 2,650-foot-wide (780-meter) Didymos “by a fraction of one percent, but this will change the orbital period of the moonlet by several minutes—enough to be observed and measured using telescopes on Earth,” according to NASA. Didymos is roughly 0.75 miles (1.2 km) from its larger companion.
Approximately 28,000 near-Earth asteroids have been documented over the years, with roughly 3,000 discoveries made each year. None of these known asteroids pose a risk to us within the next 100 years, but the chance exists that a threatening asteroid will suddenly come into view. The DART test, should it succeed, could equip us with a valuable strategy for mitigating these existential risks.
Related: NASA’s Upgraded Impact Monitoring System Could Prevent an Asteroid Apocalypse.
Artist’s depiction of Solar Orbiter.Illustration: ESA/ATG medialab
Solar Orbiter has been traveling through space for more than two years, making several close flybys of Venus as it steadily inches closer to the Sun. On September 4, the small spacecraft was in the midst of its most recent gravitational assist when it felt the violent wrath of our host star.
The Sun fired off a gigantic coronal mass ejection on August 30, reaching the spacecraft just a few days later. Thankfully, Solar Orbiter is built to withstand these types of temperamental outbursts from the Sun, and it was even able to collect valuable data on solar storms.
A large coronal mass ejection (CME) was recorded by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) on August 30.Gif: ESA/NASA SOHO
Launched in February 2020, Solar Orbiter is a collaborative mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. It’s designed to observe the Sun from up close and resolve some of the lingering mysteries about solar wind, the Sun’s magnetic field, and the rather unpredictable space weather. Throughout the course of its decade-long mission, the spacecraft will perform several flybys of Venus to adjust its orbit, bringing it closer to the Sun and out of the solar system plane such that it can peer down at the Sun from a unique vantage point. Solar Orbiter returns to Venus every few orbits around the Sun (one orbit takes around 168 days), but its latest rendezvous with the second planet was unusually eventful.
The Sun frequently produces coronal mass ejections (CMEs), or ejections of plasma that shoot out from the Sun and spread outward through the solar system. CMEs erode the Venusian atmosphere as the solar wave strips the planet of its gases, according to an ESA statement. On August 30, a massive CME shot out of the Sun and headed towards Venus. It reached the planet just as Solar Orbiter was about to make its third close flyby of Venus, with the spacecraft recording an increase in solar energetic particles.
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Some of the spacecraft’s instruments had to be turned off during its flyby around Venus, but its scientific instruments were still running, allowing it to collect valuable data on the Sun’s latest outburst. Solar Orbiter is designed to withstand a distance of just 0.27 AU from the Sun’s surface (almost three-quarters of the total distance from Earth to the Sun), where temperatures reach 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (537 degrees Celsius). The spacecraft has a special black coating that protects it from the Sun’s scorching temperatures. Solar Orbiter will be capable of getting close enough to the Sun to observe its eruptions without being harmed.
Understanding solar flares is crucial for the future of space exploration as space weather can pose serious risks for spacecraft and astronauts venturing off to cosmic destinations.
“Gathering data on events like this is crucial to understanding how they arise, improving our space weather models, forecasts and early-warning systems,” Alexi Glover, ESA Space Weather Service Coordinator, said in the statement. “Solar Orbiter is providing us with an excellent opportunity to compare our forecasts with real observations and test how well our models and tools perform for these regions.”
More: Sun-Orbiting Spacecraft Takes Fascinating Images of a Coronal Mass Ejection
Never before have we been able to view the universe the way the James Webb Telescope is showing it to us now.
Our naked eye would never be able to see what the telescope sees: travelling through light and space, James Webb can see the origins of the universe – something our minds can hardly begin to grasp.
Working a like a time machine, the first images shared by this powerful telescope on July 12 showed us far off galaxies, the death of stars, and the atmosphere of planets outside our solar system.
The latest image shared by the James Webb Telescope on August 2 takes another step further in our understanding of the universe, showing us what happens after two galaxies collide.
Peering through the cosmic dust created by the collision with its infrared cameras, the telescope gave us a shot of how the Cartwheel Galaxy is changing after a run-in with another smaller galaxy billions of years ago.
Scientists think that the Cartwheel Galaxy, a ringed galaxy over 500 million lightyears away from our planet which owes its name to its bright inner ring and colourful outer ring, was once part of a large spiral like the Milky Way, before another galaxy smashed through it.
The galaxy’s whole look, which reminded scientists of the wheel of a wagon, is due to that high-speed collision, according to NASA. From the centre of collision, the galaxy’s two rings have been expanding outwards, creating that rare ringed shape.
What can James Webb see in the Cartwheel Galaxy
Scientists have never before been able to see clearly into the chaos of the Cartwheel Galaxy and make sense of it.
The Hubble Space Telescope had already peered into the galaxy, but the amount of dust surrounding the Cartwheel Galaxy prevented the telescope from observing the phenomena taking place within the galaxy.
But now, thanks to the James Webb Telescope’ infrared cameras, scientists are able to look into the galaxy’s bright centre.
To do so, an image is created by combining Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which are able to see through the dust and reveal wavelengths of light impossible to observe in visible light conditions.
The image obtained shows the formation of stars in the aftermath of the galaxies colliding – a process which is not yet completely understood.
The bright core at the centre of the galaxy contains hot dust, says NASA, with the brightest areas being home to gigantic young star clusters.
What you can see on the outer ring, on the other hand, is the formation of new stars.
The Cartwheel Galaxy is still going through changes and will continue to transform, promising to reveal more secrets about how galaxies evolve over time, even though it might take billions of years.
This depression in Mare Tranquillitatis is a roughly 328 foot (100 meter) wide pit in the Moon’s surface that remains at a comfortable 63 degrees Fahrenheit.Image: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University
Data from a NASA probe suggests lunar pits have comfortable temperatures due to their shadowy overhangs, which keep them cool during the day and prevent heat from escaping at night.
Hard to believe now, but the seemingly inert surface of the Moon was once rife with volcanic activity. Today, we see evidence of this in the form of pits that litter the lunar surface. We’ve been privy to these pits for nearly 15 years, but recent research indicates that the temperatures within them could be far cooler—and arguably more comfortable—than the surrounding surface.
Data gathered by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter place the interior of the pits at a relatively consistent 63 degrees Fahrenheit (17.2 degrees Celsius) throughout the lunar day/night cycle. If confirmed, this would make them ripe targets for exploration and human habitation.
“Lunar pits are a fascinating feature on the lunar surface,” said Noah Petro in a NASA press release yesterday. Petro is an LRO project scientist based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Knowing that they create a stable thermal environment helps us paint a picture of these unique lunar features and the prospect of one day exploring them.”
These findings were published earlier this month in Geophysical Research Letters by scientists from the University of California in Los Angeles and the University of Colorado, Boulder. “About 16 of the more than 200 pits are probably collapsed lava tubes,” said project leader Tyler Horvath in the NASA press release. The researchers noticed that some of the pits have overhangs—the key feature that could offer future Moon explorers protection from incoming cosmic rays, micrometeorites, and wild fluctuations in surface temperature.
According to NASA, the surface of the Moon can reach highs of 260 degrees Fahrenheit (126.7 degrees Celsius) and lows of -280 degrees Fahrenheit (-173.3 degrees Celsius). But these overhangs, it appears, shade the pits during the day while preventing heat from escaping at night, leading to a consistently balmy temperature around 63 degrees Fahrenheit (17.2 degrees Celsius).
As NASA’s efforts to return humans to the Moon ramp up, creative approaches to long-term stays on the lunar surface are gaining in importance. While it’s not clear exactly how (of even if) NASA will work these pits into their mission plans, the opportunity to rely on their stable temperatures presents an intriguing possibility.
More:What to Know About Lunar Gateway, NASA’s Future Moon-Orbiting Space Station
In October 2020, a small spacecraft briefly touched down on an asteroid to snag a piece of it to bring to Earth. Almost two years later, scientists have learned that if the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft had extended its stay even a tiny bit longer, it would have sunk right into the asteroid.
That’s because asteroid Bennu is nothing like scientists had predicted. Rather than being a solid, flying rock, Bennu is actually made up of small, pebble-like particles that are not strongly bound together, creating lots of space on its surface. It’s most comparable to a plastic ball pit, NASA writes in a new release. “Our expectations about the asteroid’s surface were completely wrong” Dante Lauretta, principal investigator of OSIRIS-REx and lead author of a recent paper detailing the findings, said in the release.
OSIRIS-REx arrived at the asteroid in December 2018 with a mission to retrieve a sample from Bennu and carry it to Earth for analysis. The spacecraft touched down on Bennu in October 2020, extending its robotic arm to scoop up a piece of the asteroid. OSIRIS-REx then immediately fired up its thrusters to back away from Bennu. The spacecraft’s sampling head touched Bennu’s surface for approximately 6 seconds before retreating. By stirring up some of the dust and pebbles on the asteroid, OSIRIS-REx was able to grab a couple ounces of material.
OSIRIS-REx Sample Collection at Asteroid Bennu: SamCam View of TAGSAM
The brief rendezvous left quite an impression on Bennu, resulting in a chaotic explosion of pebbles and a crater 26 feet (8 meters) wide. “Every time we tested the sample pickup procedure in the lab, we barely made a divot,” Lauretta said. But after reviewing the footage from the real sample pick-up, the scientists were left confused. “What we saw was a huge wall of debris radiating out from the sample site,” Lauretta said. “We were like, ‘Holy cow!’”
After analyzing the volume of debris seen in before-and-after images of the landing site, the scientists learned that OSIRIS-REx faced as much resistance from touching down on the asteroid as “a person would feel while squeezing the plunger on a French press coffee carafe,” NASA wrote in a statement. That is to say, the spacecraft met very little resistance, certainly not the type of resistance one would expect from landing on a rocky body. As the spacecraft fired its thrusters to depart, it was sinking into the asteroid.
“If Bennu was completely packed, that would imply nearly solid rock, but we found a lot of void space in the surface,” Kevin Walsh, a member of the OSIRIS-REx science team and lead author of a second paper on Bennu’s composition, said in a statement.
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When OSIRIS-REx first arrived at the asteroid, closeup images of Bennu revealed that its surface was filled with boulders, rather than the smooth sandy surface that had been predicted. The images also showed that Bennu was spitting out pebbles into space. “I think we’re still at the beginning of understanding what these bodies are, because they behave in very counterintuitive ways,” Patrick Michel, an OSIRIS-REx scientist, said in the NASA release.
Bennu has been full of surprises. One of the first was its odd shape, similar to a child’s spinning top.
Lunar Glass is the proposed project that will simulate gravity through centrifugal force. Gif: Kajima Corporation/Gizmodo
Interest in the Moon has been reignited recently, and Japan is looking to get in on the fun. Researchers and engineers from Kyoto University and the Kajima Corporation have released their joint proposal for a three-pronged approach to sustainable human life on the Moon and beyond.
The future of space exploration will likely include longer stays in low gravity environments, whether in orbit or on the surface of another planet. Problem is, long stays in space can wreak havoc on our physiology; recent research shows that astronauts can suffer a decade of bone loss during months in space, and that their bones never return to normal. Thankfully, researchers from Kyoto University and the Kajima Corporation are seeking to engineer a potential solution.
The proposal, announced in a press release last week, looks like something ripped straight from the pages of a sci-fi novel. The plan consists of three distinct elements, the first of which, called “The Glass,” aims to bring simulated gravity to the Moon and Mars through centrifugal force.
02 ルナグラスと交通機関
Gravity on the Moon and Mars is about 16.5% and 37.9% of that on Earth, respectively. Lunar Glass and Mars Glass could bridge that gap; they are massive, spinning cones that will use centrifugal force to simulate the effects of Earth’s gravity. These spinning cones will have an approximate radius of 328 feet (100 meters) and height of 1,312 feet (400 meters), and will complete one rotation every 20 seconds, creating a 1g experience for those inside (1g being the gravity on Earth). The researchers are targeting the back half of the 21st century for the construction of Lunar Glass, which seems unreasonably optimistic given the apparent technological expertise required to pull this off.
The second element of the plan is the “core biome complex” for “relocating a reduced ecosystem to space,” according to a Google-translated version of the press release. The core biome complex would exist within the Moon Glass/Mars Glass structure and it’s where the human explorers would live, according to the proposal. The final element of the proposal is the “Hexagon Space Track,” or Hexatrack, a high-speed transportation infrastructure that could connect Earth, Mars, and the Moon. Hexatrack will require at least three different stations, one on Mars’s moon Phobos, one in Earth orbit, and one around the Moon (likely the planned Lunar Gateway).
The journey back to the Moon is getting nearer while interest in settling Mars is growing. A major obstacle in the way of long-term stays on these bodies is gravity. The proposal from Kyoto University and the Kajima Corporation is exciting and promising, but it’s not something we should expect any time soon.
More:NASA’s CAPSTONE Probe Is Officially en Route to the Moon