Will SpaceX Really Fly to Mars in 2018?

There’s no shortage of sky high claims when it comes to interplanetary exploration, and SpaceX is the latest aspirant. In 2018, American owned Space Exploration Technologies Corporation claims that it will fly its next generation Dragon capsule to Mars, which gives engineers just two years to perfect the craft. But is it possible?

Jim Bell, School of Earth and Space Exploration Professor at Tempe’s Arizona State University is confident, commenting that the timeline is ambitious yet realistic. Having worked on a host of NASA Mars missions, as well as the planned Mars 2020 rover, Bell is an undisputed expert in his field.

“Everything about Dragon since the beginning has been done with Mars in mind, you can tell from the design,” he says. “I wouldn’t put anything past these folks.”

A collaborative effort

Interestingly, one of the major challenges isn’t getting the craft to Mars, but successfully landing it on the Red Planet’s surface. Brian Glass of California’s NASA Ames Research Center has confirmed that America's keynote space agency will be assisting on the project, and that it’s been a long time in the making.

“This is not out of the blue,” he explains. “It’s not just boom, two years off the block. This is more like a seven-year effort that culminates with launch in 2018 and goes from there.”

Can the dragon spread its wings?

So does SpaceX have the experience to successfully land its capsule on Mars? The aerospace pioneer launched its first Falcon 9 rocket back in 2010, while the existing Dragon capsule has been delivering supplies to the International Space Station for four years. The proposed 2018 Mars expedition will supercharge both of these concepts, using an ultra-powerful Falcon Heavy rocket to launch the reimagined Dragon 2 capsule into outer space.

Former NASA chief technologist Robert Braun is another advocate, asserting that “If the Falcon Heavy stays on schedule and the Dragon 2 stays on schedule, they can make 2018.”

Sceptics mark SpaceX as “too ambitious”

Of course, not everyone’s as optimistic and SpaceX has received ample criticism. Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics was quick to remind the company of its previously missed deadlines, and is concerned that major issues could materialise in the first round of testing.

“You can’t guarantee that the first few launches of this big rocket will be trouble-free,” he says. “I think 2018 is going to be pushing it. I could believe 2019, but I wouldn’t mortgage my house on it.”

That said, he’s not all doom and gloom. He’s still confident the mission will go ahead, regardless of whether SpaceX hits its 2018 target. “They’ll do it. It’s just a question of when.”

With an increasing number of agencies setting their sights on Mars, the search is on for life on the Red Planet. If evidence is found, electron microscopy will likely play a key role in scrutinising samples. ‘Flash-and-freeze Electron Microscopy – Adding Motion to Electron Micrographs’ looks at the latest ‘flash-and-freeze’ technique, and how researchers at the Jorgensen and Watanabe laboratories are using it to study membrane trafficking events at neuronal synapses.

Image via Flickr Creative Commons. Photo credits: NASA Johnson