If you’ve been paying any attention to the back half of newscasts the last few weeks, a couple of unusual stories have been working their way up the ladder from the realm of science fiction. The first is the NASA launch of the OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft on September 8th to rendezvous with asteroid 101955 Bennu. Benue is a NEO, or Near Earth Object, one of more than 7,000 known asteroids that have a chance of impacting the Earth in the future. Because the Earth has been whacked before by some pretty big rocks, and will be again (we’re actually overdue), a bunch of rocket scientists thought the billion dollar mission price tag might be worth it. OSIRIS-Rex will encounter Bennu sometime in 2018, go into orbit, do some mapping, and then grab a boulder and return it to Earth in September of 2023.
From what they learn, the aforementioned scientists will come up with a plan to deflect future potential impactors, like Bennu, away from our home planet. Plan B is to spread the human race out so the Earth is not the sole habitat of humans. Mars was the natural choice, as it is probably the most like our home.
It’s reasonably close, has seasons and has days about the same length as we do. It has a weak magnetic field and aurora.
Its 35C degree summer temperatures balance out the minus 143 temp at the poles. When the wind’s up, it has dust storms. Sounds a lot like Saskatchewan. Gravity is one third ours, so if things don’t work out, leaving will be easy. Of course, they down play the fact it has almost no atmosphere, as if instant sunburn and the inability to breath would be mere annoyances. NASA’s got a plan to put something on the surface in the 2030’s, the Netherlands’ ‘Mars One’ group has been recruiting volunteers since 2013, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX plans to land 100 settlers every two years when Earth and Mars are near each other, until a colony of one million is reached in fifty to hundred years. While the price will be a number so big it’s not invented yet, the biggest stumbling block is the technology.
Getting a rock from Bennu will cost one billion dollars, and rocks don’t require shelter or food or water or oxygen. Or sunscreen. With little done in the field of manned space travel since the Moon landings, optimism is pretty much all we’ve got to go on. On the 6th of October, the Moon lies a little west of Mars and east of Saturn (which sets by eight).
Mars continues to speed eastward to avoid setting, and will actually be getting higher in the sky over the next few months. Enjoy your view of our neighbour in space. I’m no rocket scientist, but my bet is that it will be some time before anyone will be looking back.
