From solar sail-powered spacecraft, to laser communications, to asteroid detection systems, there is no shortage of Australian ideas and expertise to help NASA explore the Moon and Mars.
The health of astronauts will be one of the main challenges for Musk.
D Mitriy/wikimedia
A true plan for the colonisation of Mars should include both the social and technical feasibility of living there. Unfortunately, Musk left that bit out.
The HI-SEAS mission gives people a chance to practise on Earth what life would be like on Mars. A crew member here from the 2015 mission.
Flickr/University of Hawaii/HI-SEAS
What’s the best way to find out how people will cope with the journey to Mars and life on another planet? Lock a test crew up for a year in a simulation right here on Earth.
What could be out there? That question eventually led to the discovery of Pluto.
ESO/L. Calçada
The existence of a “Planet X” in the outer solar system was the subject of great speculation, and was finally settled with the discovery of Pluto in 1930.
Pluto’s newly clear topography.
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
Scott Kenyon, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Photos from the spacecraft’s close approach are dazzling. They and other data from the mission will fill in some of the blanks about Pluto and provide a snapshot of the infant solar system.
NASA has now formally started to pack its bags for the next big discovery mission, this time heading to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. Last month NASA announced the instruments that will fly on this trip and…