SpaceX has announced that it will send the spacecraft to Mars by 2018. But getting the spacecraft going is half the battle. It is also necessary that it fly to Mars like a working machine, and not like dead iron. This is the intrigue.
The American company SpaceX plans to send an unmanned Dragon spacecraft to Mars no later than 2018.
For the first time, the company announced the exact date for which an unmanned flight to Mars is scheduled.
SpaceX will present detailed information on the flight at the International Astronautics Congress in September.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted that Dragon-2 was designed "to land anywhere in the solar system."
At the same time, he noted that this device is not suitable for flights of people beyond the Moon, stressing that the mission to Mars of the program called Red Dragon is the first test flight.
The Red Dragon mission is designed to develop the technology needed to transport humans to Mars.
The feeling that the Martian project of the Mask is some kind of grandiose hoax with unclear real goals, says Igor Lisov, an expert with the Novosti Kosmonavtiki magazine.
Promotional video:
“Abstractly and technologically, such a flight is, of course, possible. Spacecraft have been launched to Mars many times, they even flew and even worked there. But it is not enough just to put the apparatus on the flight path to Mars. We also need to ensure that he gets there in a working condition, and this will be completely different forces and means, he told Ridus.
Until now, not a single test of the Dragon has been carried out, which would show that the ship is adapted to work in space for at least a year, which takes a flight to the Red Planet. So far, the device has flown for no more than a few months, and then not autonomously, but in a state docked to the ISS.
In addition, an interplanetary spacecraft is not a ballistic missile, which was launched once, and then it flies by itself along the calculated trajectory. On the way to Mars, the trajectory of the apparatus will have to be corrected, which means that ground infrastructure is needed that can maintain constant communication with the Dragon.
“SpaceX doesn't have that infrastructure. This means that the company will most likely rent it from NASA,”says Lisov.
Musk previously said that SpaceX will make a manned flight to Mars in 2020-2025.