Getting to Mars could be much faster with a new method developed by a scientific team from Germany. Experts in astronomy and astrophysics created a probe, digitally, that is propelled through space by means of solar sails and is capable of traveling to the red planet in just 26 days.
Just to have an idea, the Perseverance, which is NASA’s most recent mission on Martian lands, took 202 days to reach the surface of our planetary neighbor. This new method does it in less than a month. How does it work?
According to a report published in Acta Astronáutica in September 2023, this space probe with airbrush solar sails was developed by a team of researchers from the Institute of Physics of the University of Hamburg, Germany.
For now, there is only the computational model with which they achieved the milestone. But it is a matter of putting the theory into practice with which unprecedented times would be achieved when traveling through the Solar System.
Airbrush is a light and resistant material that can be manufactured with a high air content. The researchers found that a 100-meter-wide airbrush space probe could reach a speed of 100 kilometers per second. With this speed, the probe could reach Mars in just 26 days.
Although it represents a notable advance in the speed of interplanetary travel, experts also point out that there are technical challenges that must be addressed before solar sails can be used for trips to Mars.
One of the challenges is the deployment of a large solar sail in the middle of space. The ship would first have to go into orbit with a rocket and then spread its wings in space. Another challenge is protecting the space probe from the effects of solar radiation.