Latest news with #RedPlanet
Gizmodo
a day ago
- Politics
- Gizmodo
Musk Still Thinks Mars Is a Go for 2026, Despite Starship's Epic Losing Streak
The SpaceX CEO outlined upcoming changes to the rocket while staying committed to a 2026 mission to the Red Planet. Despite a disappointing streak of Starship launches, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk remains optimistic about using the megarocket to transport humans to Mars within the next few years. During a recent talk, the rocket billionaire remained intent on launching Starship to Mars during an upcoming window in 2026. He also awkwardly mentioned that humanity would need to move to the Red Planet in case World War III breaks out. On Thursday, SpaceX released a video of Musk addressing employees during a company talk titled, 'The Road to Making Life Multiplanetary.' The talk was originally meant to be streamed on Tuesday, the same day Starship lifted off for a less-than-ideal test flight. Musk was a no-show, leading us to wonder where he was. Then, without explanation, the company dropped the 42-minute video on its X page, though it's not clear when Musk delivered the talk. As expected, Musk made some big promises for Starship while ignoring the rocket's three consecutive failures. 'Progress is measured by the timeline to establishing a self-sustaining civilization on Mars,' Musk said during his talk. 'Each launch is about learning more and more about what's needed to make life multi-planetary and to improve Starship to the point where it can be taking, ultimately, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people to Mars.' Musk sees Mars as a vital lifeline for humanity, describing it as essential 'for the long term survival of civilization.' He claims that any civilization is likely to last 10 times longer if it is multiplanetary, because 'there's always some chance that us humans could do something crazy like World War III,' he said. 'Hopefully not, but it's possible.' Starship is at the center of Musk's overly ambitious plan to establish human settlements on Mars. Before its most recent test flight, Starship suffered back-to-back glitches that resulted in the rocket exploding twice in a row. SpaceX stated that there were several improvements made to Starship ahead of Flight 9, but the rocket fell into an unrecoverable spin about 30 minutes after launch. SpaceX managed to push Starship further than in the previous two tests but it still failed to meet a lot of its flight goals, including the deployment of eight simulated Starlink satellites, relighting one of its engines in space, and testing the rocket's engine during reentry. During his talk, Musk failed to refer to Starship's recent losses and instead boasted about clear highlights from the rocket's launch journey thus far, including that epic booster catch on October 13, 2024. Starship, the largest rocket ever built, currently stands 397 feet (121 meters) tall, but an upcoming version of it will be even bigger. Version 3, according to Musk, will be at around 408 feet (124.4 meters). Aside from its bigger frame, Starship will also have an upgraded design that Musk hopes will make it more reliable, with an upper stage that can be refueled in Earth orbit so that it can reach more distant destinations like Mars. The vehicle will also have upgraded Raptor engines. 'The upgraded Raptors have a complete redesign of the aft end of the booster and the ship,' Musk said during a recent interview with Ars Technica. 'So, because we don't need the heat shield around the upper portion of the engine, it greatly simplifies the base of the booster and the ship. It'll look a little, frankly, naked, especially on the booster side, because the engines will just be there, like, not with stuff around them.' The SpaceX CEO is aiming for Starship's Version 3 to fly by the end of this year. From there, he hopes to catch an upcoming launch window for Mars that opens at the end of 2026. 'We'll try to make that opportunity, if we get lucky,' Musk said during his talk. 'I think we probably have a 50/50 chance right now.' We've learned not to take Musk's timelines too seriously, but a Starship redesign will probably be necessary to lift the rocket out of its recent slump. And until SpaceX successfully demonstrates in-orbit refueling—an absolute requirement for reaching Mars—Starship remains more fantasy than spacecraft.
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS Elon Musk reveals new bombshell plan as he leaves Trump's White House
Elon Musk has big plans following the fallout with President Donald Trump. The billionaire hosted a live event Thursday to discuss the future of SpaceX, revealing the company's massive Starship rocket is set to launch to Mars next year. Musk laid out his long-held dream of colonizing the Red Planet, using next-generation rockets, surrounding the Martian world with internet satellites and eventually building habitats. This is a developing story... More updates to come.
Gizmodo
3 days ago
- Business
- Gizmodo
Elon Musk Flaked on His Big Mars Talk. Here's What He Might've Been Doing Instead
Elon Musk opting not to talk about his ambitious plans to colonize Mars, now that's a first. The rocket billionaire was a no-show for a company discussion on establishing human settlements on the Red Planet, which was meant to take place on the same day as Starship's most recent test flight. The megarocket's mid performance may have been the leading cause behind Musk's last-minute change of plans, or maybe he was busy finding ways to avoid paying child support. In an emailed statement on Monday, SpaceX announced that Musk was going to discuss the company's plans for colonizing Mars. The company talk was set to be livestreamed on SpaceX's X page and its website on Tuesday at 1 p.m. ET. Instead of streaming Musk's overly eager ramblings, the webcast remained silent before delaying the start time to 1:10 p.m. and then another time to 1:15 p.m., and finally pushing it until 9 p.m. ET. On that same day, Starship's liftoff was scheduled for 7:30 p.m. ET, so delaying the talk meant Musk was supposed to speak after the rocket's test flight instead of before. Musk, however, did neither. We're not entirely sure why the world's richest man failed to show up yesterday for the big Mars talk, so we've put together a list of other things Musk might have been doing instead of indulging in his favorite topic—colonizing the Red Planet. Cheating in video games What do you do when you have an accumulated wealth of $400 billion? If you're Musk, you might just pay people to play video games for you. Earlier this year, reports surfaced suggesting that Musk has used boosted characters in games like Diablo and PoE2. The SpaceX CEO often leans into his gamer persona as part of his personal brand, but he later admitted in direct messages on X to a gaming buddy that he does, in fact, pay others to play for him. Healing from his toxic relationship with Trump Musk and Donald Trump were inseparable throughout the president's campaign, to which he generously donated $288 million. He got especially chummy with Trump once he was back in the White House. It seems, however, that the two are drifting apart. This week, Musk admitted that he is disappointed with Trump's 'big, beautiful bill,' which he says undermines the work of the Department of Government Efficiency, which he spearheads. Musk also complained that the administration is using DOGE as a scapegoat. 'DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,' Musk told The Washington Post in a recent interview. 'Something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.' It's not like we didn't see this coming, but even rocket billionaires can get tangled up in the wrong relationship. Being a terrible father Musk has been criticized for not being a good father to his 13 children (or whatever the number actually is). The SpaceX CEO is often seen in public with his son X, who he shares with the musician Grimes, but his other kids don't seem to get the same amount of attention. The mother of one of Musk's children, MAGA influencer Ashley St. Clair, recently sold her Tesla in retaliation to Musk allegedly not paying enough money in child support. The billionaire's own father, who is also famously known for bad parenting, called Musk a bad father in an interview earlier this year. Musk also has an estranged relationship with his trans daughter Vivian, whom he publicly refers to as 'dead.' Watching Starship flop yet again There was a lot riding on Starship's Tuesday launch. The rocket had suffered back-to-back glitches that resulted in two explosions during the last two test flights. SpaceX reported that it had identified the problem and made 'several hardware changes' ahead of Starship's ninth flight, according to a statement. Starship blasted off from its launchpad in Boca Chica, Texas, a few minutes past 7:30 p.m. ET. Things were going smoothly at first, until around 30 minutes after liftoff when SpaceX announced that Starship had fallen into an unrecoverable spin as the result of the loss of attitude control. SpaceX managed to push Starship further than in the previous two tests, but its latest flight was a rocky affair that failed to achieve a number of key goals. Indeed, the Super Heavy booster—the first to be reflown in a fully integrated test—never made it back to the launch mount. Starship is a key part of Musk's plans to send humans to Mars, which he claimed could happen in 2026. At least, that was part of the announcement for 'The Road to Making Life Multiplanetary' talk, which he flaked on at the last minute. Perhaps scheduling it on the same day as Starship's test flight was a bit of a risk, and anything Musk had to say during his talk would have been nullified by the rocket's less-than-ideal performance. Still, it's rude to leave us hanging like that.
Gizmodo
6 days ago
- Science
- Gizmodo
Water on Mars? Mysterious Dark Streaks Aren't What Scientists Thought
Scientists have been arguing about the origin of strange streaks on Mars since the earliest missions to the Red Planet. In 1976, NASA's Viking mission successfully landed the first spacecraft on Mars. When the mission began sending images from Mars' surface back to Earth, scientists noted long, dark streaks on crater walls and cliff sides. To this day, some researchers suggest that the strange geographical features are the result of water flow—but a recent study says otherwise. Planetary scientists from Brown University and the University of Bern have used artificial intelligence to reveal that the enigmatic Martian streaks likely result from wind and dust, not water flow. Their results have important implications for future Mars exploration, as well as humanity's continuous search for habitable environments and life beyond Earth. Some slope streaks are long-lasting, while others—called recurring slope lineae (RSL)—are more ephemeral, continuously appearing in the same places during Mars' hottest times of the year. Although Mars is generally dry and cold (with temperatures as low as -225 degrees Fahrenheit, or -153 degrees Celsius) small amounts of water from potential ice, underground sources, or humidity could conceivably mix with enough salt to become liquid and flow down a slope. Because water is a key ingredient for life on Earth, such formations might represent habitable regions on the Red Planet, too. But some researchers aren't convinced, arguing that dry processes could have created those features instead. To settle the matter, the researchers trained an algorithm on a dataset of confirmed slope streak sightings, as detailed in a study published Monday in the journal Nature Communications. They then used the algorithm to scan over 86,000 high-resolution satellite images and compose a map of Martian slope streaks. 'Once we had this global map, we could compare it to databases and catalogs of other things like temperature, wind speed, hydration, rock slide activity and other factors,' Valentin Bickel, co-author of the study and a University of Bern Center for Space and Habitability fellow, said in a Brown University statement. 'Then we could look for correlations over hundreds of thousands of cases to better understand the conditions under which these features form.' Simply put, their results do not link slope streaks and RSLs with features indicating the presence of liquid or even frost. Instead, the researchers discovered that both slope streaks and RSLs tend to develop in areas with high wind speed and dust deposition. In other words, they are likely caused by a dry process in which dust layers abruptly slide down a slope, triggered by external forces. Rather than seeing these results as yet another failure in our search for extraterrestrial life, the planetary scientists explain that the study still carries weight for future Mars explorations. If their research had confirmed the theory that slope streaks were caused by water, and that as a result the region might host some form of life, NASA would have actually avoided the area for the time being. That's because scientists fear that spacecraft and rovers might still harbor terrestrial life, such as microbes, which could contaminate Martian habitats and interfere with our search for Martian life. 'That's the advantage of this big data approach,' explained Adomas Valantinas, the other co-author of the study and a planetary scientist at Brown University who specializes in Martian geology. 'It helps us to rule out some hypotheses from orbit before we send spacecraft to explore.' In an industry that seems obsessed with finding water on Mars, the study stands as a reminder that not every scientific breakthrough needs to be about extraterrestrial life.
CBC
23-05-2025
- Science
- CBC
With uncertainty around life on Mars, human visits present an ethical dilemma
The first step by a human on the surface of Mars will inevitably transfer Earthly microbes onto Martian soil. Scientists are increasingly concerned with what the implications of contaminating another planet will be. A recent study, published this month in the journal Microbiome, analyzed the clean rooms at the Kennedy Space Center, where Mars landers are sterilized before launch. The team found 26 species of novel bacteria that could potentially survive the harsh environment of space. These organisms contain genes that enhance DNA repair, detoxification of harmful molecules, and enhance metabolism, all of which makes them more hardy. NASA goes to great lengths to ensure any spacecraft that departs for Mars is sterilized in these ultra-clean rooms and sealed in capsules before launch to prevent cross-contamination between two planets. We don't know whether any of these microbes actually made it to Mars because we have no way of examining the spacecraft while they are on the Red Planet. The chances of microbes surviving the vacuum of space, extreme temperatures, along with solar and cosmic radiation are slim, however there was a case where Earth microbes did seem to survive for years on the moon. In 1969, the crew of Apollo 12 landed close to a robotic probe called Surveyor 3 which had arrived on the lunar surface three years earlier. The astronauts removed a television camera, electrical cables and a sample scoop which were returned to Earth for study on the long term effects of exposure to space. To everyone's surprise, a common bacteria, Streptococcus mitis, was found inside the camera lens. This harmless organism, normally found in the mouth and throat of humans, was thought to have been on the spacecraft before launch because Surveyor was not sterilized. A later study done by NASA in 1998 suggested the bacteria could have come from contamination due to poor procedures after the lens was returned to Earth. But there is still the possibility that microbes could survive in space. Sterilizing a robotic spacecraft to prevent contamination is one thing, but sterilizing human beings is impossible. We are substantially made of bacteria, covered in microbes from head to toe and internally, constantly shedding them with dead skin and other detritus. And those organisms will travel with us to Mars. WATCH | Saturday cleaning day on the Space Station: New species of bacteria have been found inside China's Tiangong-1 space station and astronauts on the International Space Station are constantly cleaning the walls to prevent the buildup of microbes in that sealed environment. This is evidence that bacteria can survive the higher radiation environment of a space habitat. That means any human boot that touches the Martian soil will bring with it organisms from inside the spacecraft or colony. Whether those bugs could survive long in the Martian environment is to be determined, but the more serious issue is what they would do to any indigenous organisms that could already be living on Mars. Curiosity, one of the rovers currently driving around on the Red Planet, has been collecting soil samples from different areas and sealing them in tubes to be collected and returned to Earth by a future sample return mission. The idea is to look for signs of current life or fossils of past life using the powerful tools in Earth laboratories. But NASA is proposing cancelling the sample return, so we may not know for some time whether microbes exist in Martian soil. Mars shows signs of a warm and wet past, where the planet was once covered with lakes, rivers and oceans. This was during a time, roughly three billion years ago, when life was emerging on Earth. So far, no signs of life have been found on Mars, but we have only been looking on the surface, not underground where water might exist. Still, there is talk of sending people to Mars, even establishing a Mars colony. But is that wise before we determine whether the planet has life or not? In the classic science fiction story, War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, Martians come to Earth with invincible machines that wreak havoc on cities. Our most powerful weapons are useless against their incredible power. But eventually, the invaders are taken down by the tiniest creature, the common cold, for which they had no resistance. In real life, the tables are turned.
