We’ve said it before: Mars’ moon Phobos is doomed. But a new study indicates it might be worse than we thought.

One of the most striking features we see on images of Phobos is the parallel sets of grooves on the moon’s surface.

They were originally thought to be fractures caused by an impact long ago. But scientists now say the grooves are early signs of the structural failure that will ultimately destroy this moon.

“We think that Phobos has already started to fail, and the first sign of this failure is the production of these grooves,” said Terry Hurford, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Why is Phobos falling apart?

Two words: tidal forces.

Phobos orbits closer to its planet than any moon in the solar system.

As it orbits just 6,000 km (3,700 miles) above Mars, the planet’s gravity is pulling Phobos in closer and closer, and it is also tearing Phobos apart. Scientists estimate the ultimate destruction of this tiny moon (22 kilometers/13.5 miles in diameter) might take place in about 30 million to 50 million years.

It only take about 7.5 hours for Phobos to complete an orbit around the planet, while Mars takes almost 25 hours to complete one rotation on its axis.

So Phobos travels three times around the planet for every Martian day. And as Fraser explains in this video, this is a problem.

Mars’ gravity is pulling in Phobos closer by about 2 meters (6.6 feet) every hundred years. The orbit will get lower and lower until it reaches a level known as the Roche Limit. This is the point where the tidal forces between the two sides of the moon are so different that it gets torn apart.

Hurford and his colleagues, who presented their latest findings at the annual Meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society this week, also delivered other bad news about the interior of Phobos – which could ultimately speed up the demise of the moon.

Phobos’ insides are likely to be just a big pile of rubble — barely holding together — surrounded by a layer of powdery regolith about 100 meters (330 feet) thick.

“The funny thing about the result is that it shows Phobos has a kind of mildly cohesive outer fabric,” said Erik Asphaug of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University in Tempe and a co-investigator on the study. “This makes sense when you think about powdery materials in microgravity, but it’s quite non-intuitive.”

Phobos’ grooves have long been an issue up for debate. As mentioned previously, one idea is that the grooves were associated with the impact that formed Stickney Crater, a big 10 km-wide crater that dominates one side of Phobos.

However, scientists eventually determined that the grooves don’t radiate outward from the crater itself but from a focal point nearby.

Another idea is they came from Phobos moving through streams of debris thrown up from impacts 6,000 km away on the surface of Mars, with each “family” of grooves corresponding to a different impact event.

But new modeling by Hurford and his team supports the idea that the grooves are more like “stretch marks” that occur when Phobos gets deformed by tidal forces.

The team said that stress fractures predicted by their model coincide with the grooves seen in images of Phobos. This explanation also fits with the observation that some grooves are younger than others, which would be the case if the process that creates them is ongoing.

Hurford also said the same fate may await Neptune’s moon Triton, which is also slowly falling inward and has a similarly fractured surface. The work also has implications for extrasolar planets, according to researchers.

“We can’t image those distant planets to see what’s going on, but this work can help us understand those systems, because any kind of planet falling into its host star could get torn apart in the same way,” said Hurford.

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Deep, scar-like grooves wind all the way around the Martian moon Phobos, and now scientists think they mean something ominous: The tiny moon is slowly being shredded into pieces.

"We think that Phobos has already started to fail, and the first sign of this failure is the production of these grooves," said NASA scientist Terry Hurford in a press release.

You can see the grooves in the image below. They're especially prominent in the top right area:

Phobos, which is roughly the size of the length of Manhattan, will likely meet an early demise because it's unusually close to Mars. According to NASA our moon is nearly 239,000 miles from Earth, but Phobos is only about 3,700 miles away from Mars.

The closer distance means Martian gravity is tugging exceptionally hard on Phobos — it's pulling the moon closer by about 6.6 feet every year. At that rate, scientists estimate Phobos will slowly crumble under the force, break apart completely in the next 30 to 50 million years, and vanish.

Previously, scientists thought the grooves on Phobos came from an ancient meteor strike. That meteor crashed in Phobos and left a deep hole called Stickney crater. It appeared that the grooves were fracture lines coming from the crater.

Here's what that crater looks like:

However, Hurford and his team noticed that the grooves didn't originate at the crater. Models show that they are more likely "stretch marks," or cracks that appear as Phobos gets deformed by Mars' gravity.

Some moons are strong enough withstand the gravitational pull from their planets. The Earth and the moon both exert a gravitational force on each other called tidal force. Tidal force is the reason Earth's oceans have tides and why the Earth and the moon are slightly egg-shaped rather than perfectly round.

But unlike our moon, Phobos has a very weak core. NASA scientists think it's just a pile of rubble coated with dust. So the tidal force generated between Mars and Phobos is causing the fragile moon to crack open. It's uncertain if the same thing is happening to Deimos, Mars' only other moon. (It orbits the planet about 2.5 times farther away than Phobos.)

The research could help us better understand planets outside our solar system, since the same thing can happen to planets that are being pulled toward their host star.

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NASA wants to send its astronauts to Mars, but first it should make a brief detour to the moon, according to a group of MIT researchers.

It's a very different plan than the NASA astronauts in the latest sci-fi action film "The Martian" take.

Moreover, it's not what the real NASA describes in their outline for human exploration of Mars, called the Mars Design Reference Architecture 5.0.

But the US space agency might want to reconsider their designs if they ever hope to make manned deep-space exploration sustainable.

That's the conclusion that the MIT researchers proposed in a paper published last month in the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets.

The group, which also included researchers from Keio University in Japan and the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Los Angeles, explored a future where manned missions to the Red Planet are routine, and the moon is a pit stop along the way.

"In the decades to come, space exploration is expected to transition from a set of isolated missions to an intricately-linked campaign,"the researchers wrote in their paper.

If such a future arrives, then space agencies will certainly want to know the optimal route to Mars in order to minimize cost.

Why the moon?

When it comes to deep-space travel, there are a couple of options:

1. Pack everything you'll need before launch and chart a course straight for Mars (or whatever your destination)
2. Pack some of what you need before launch and collect the rest at pit stops along the way

The MIT group made a series of detailed calculations to determine which approach was more efficient.

Ultimately, they concluded that astronauts could launch from Earth with up to 68% less mass using option #2; most of the heavy liquid fuel they would be carrying with them using option #1 could be gathered up instead during a pit stop near the moon.

Where would this fuel come from?

The lunar south pole might contain large water-ice reserves trapped in corners of craters that never see daylight. And that ice could be transformed into fuel.

Ideally, machines or humans would mine the ice, stripping the oxygen in the water molecules and turning it into liquid oxygen — the stuff that fuels most rockets today.

Many space agencies, including the Russian Federal Space Agnecy and the European Space Agency, are interested in the moon for this very reason.

At first, pit stops would be near the moon. But eventually, they could be moved to other places in space along the way to Mars, as shown in the illustration below:

A lighter load

Launching with a lighter rocket has other benefits as well, such as reducing the overall cost of the mission.

Olivier de Weck, a co-author of the paper and a professor of aeronautics, astronautics, and engineering at MIT, told Forbes that a 68% reduction in launch mass could save roughly $8.5 billion per manned mission to Mars.

This cost estimate is strikingly similar to another estimate announced earlier this year by the NexGen Space LLC. NASA hired NexGen to determine how much it would cost for a lunar-detour scenario to Mars.

In their report, NexGen states that a lunar refueling station would "reduce the cost to NASA of sending humans to Mars by as much as $10 billion per year."

MIT's calculations are assuming current launch estimates of about $10,000 per kilogram of cargo, de Weck told Forbes, which could come down with the advent of reusable rockets.

This $8.5-billion savings plan, however, only addresses the cost of the mission and does not account for the enormous cost and time it would take to:

1. Launch equipment to the moon
2. Build a mining base on the moon
3. Establish a nearby chemical plant in space to serve as a rendezvous point for the manned spacecraft
4. Design a regular transportation system to get the water from the mine to the plant

Still, the group asserted that:

"If operational costs and risks can be managed, this concept could be a significant improvement over the current strategy for Mars exploration described in Mars DRA 5.0."

Takuto Ishimatsu, who was lead author on the paper and who is now a postdoc at MIT, told MIT News that the plan is not necessary for a first trip to Mars, but rather is a way to make repeated trips to Mars affordable and sustainable.

“Our ultimate goal is to colonize Mars and to establish a permanent, self-sustainable human presence there,” Ishimatsu told MIT News. “However, equally importantly, I believe that we need to ‘pave a road’ in space so that we can travel between planetary bodies in an affordable way.”

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Unlike our lovely Earth, Mars won't shield us from blasts of cosmic radiation.

If we hope to live there, we'll need to equip our future colonies with underground tunnels, Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society, tells Tech Insider. Like Earth's magnetic field, the tunnels will shield colonists from rays. That way, we won't need to always suit up when we travel between habitats.

"Imagine living in a subway system," Zubrin says. 

While scientists disagree on the timeline, future space colonies will required technology that we don't yet have. "We need some breakthroughs that fundamentally change the game," Ariel Waldman, committee member of the National Academy of Sciences, tells Tech Insider. "Then, all the timelines will get erased and revised."

This is what it would take to live on Mars.

A power source.

Ion engines looks the most promising. Spacecrafts can travel farther, faster, and cheaper with ion engines than any other propulsion technology, NASA says.

How it works: a solar panel connects to the engine, which speeds up a bunch of particles (or ions) inside. The magnetism from the particles, in turn, generates energy and powers the engine.

Space missions have used these engines for more than four decades, and researchers are still working to improve them. A group of researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently developed a new design that increases their lifespan.

The current challenge: the engines don't generate enough solar energy. It will take advanced solar technology to move rockets 141 million miles to Mars or power a large Martian colony.

The right spacesuit.

Spacesuits that can deal with Mars' extremely low and unpredictable pressure will be essential.

Mars exerts only 0.06% of Earth's surface pressure. Depending on the location, Earth's air pressure can vary about 10%, whereas Mars' can vary as much as 50%.

This month, NASA unveiled a spacesuit prototype that can take the pressure. With the Z-2 suit, astronauts can maneuver in and out of rovers, collect samples, and walk around with ease.

Radiation protection.

Once we have the suits, we will also need to shield the colonies from cosmic rays.

NASA recently reported that solar wind stripped Mars' atmosphere and turned the planet into a wasteland. Now, it has about 1% of the atmosphere of Earth.

Zubrin says that our best bet is to cover the colonies in sand bags.

The science fiction novel-turned-movie "The Martian" has spawned an awesomely nerdy meme that gives props to NASA.

It shows how many "sols"— Martian days — that both "The Martian" main character Mark Watney and the NASA's Opportunity mars rover spent on the Red Planet.

Here's the significance behind it:

In "The Martian," astronaut Mark Watney gets stranded on Mars. He's stuck there for a total of 549 Martian days, which, since days on Mars are about 40 minutes longer than days on Earth, scientists refer to them as "sols."

549 sols is a pretty long time. But NASA has a real robotic rover on Mars right now called Opportunity that's been exploring the red planet for 4,144 sols (more than 11 Earth years) and counting.

Which means Opportunity is kicking Watney's butt.

In "The Martian," there's a scene where Mark Watney realizes he technically colonized Mars by being the first person to grow crops on the planet, and says "In your face, Neil Armstrong!"

The image references that line as a nod to what NASA has accomplished with Opportunity:

And NASA has reason to be proud of their little rover. Opportunity was meant to last only 90 days on the red planet. It's now completed a marathon (26.2 miles) in its past 11 years on Mars, and it's still actively exploring the planet.

You can see how far the rover has traveled in the image below, and some of the discoveries it's made along the way:

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Although dutch company Mars One aims to send unmanned robotic missions and ultimately the first settlers to Mars, celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said private companies won't be the ones to get humans to the Red Planet.

"They're not doing the same thing, and they can't, really," Tyson told Business Insider while promoting his National Geographic Channel series, "StarTalk," which is adapted from his popular podcast of the same name. "The private company is not going to lead a mission to Mars. It's not going to happen. If they do, it'll be a one-off, and it's not a business model."

Tyson wanted to be clear that he doesn't rule out the possibility that NASA would use a spaceship made by a private company for a mission to Mars. 

"That's different," he clarified. "If NASA's taking us to Mars, which is how it's going to have to happen, then that's tax-based money paying for that private vehicle."

In the 57-year-old scientist's mind, a government agency would be the only entity able to plan over a long period of time for a project like going to Mars.

"[Governments] say, 'We want to invest in our country, five years down the line, 10 years down the line,'" Tyson said, "whereas the CEO of XYZ company has to satisfy the quarterly report and the annual report. So you don't have the luxury of the long-term investment the way the country does. So the government does it first, and it farms out the routine things to private enterprise, who can do it efficiently."

Tyson's thinking is aligned with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who suggested, at the first annual SpaceCom Expo in Houston last week, that as NASA turns its attention to Mars, private companies can help with low-orbit functions like maintaining the International Space Station and providing trips to the moon.

"So right now, SpaceX is carrying cargo, that and maybe, ultimately, astronauts, back and forth to the space station," Tyson suggested. "You don't need NASA to do that, to be a cargo vessel. NASA is for advancing a frontier, not for housekeeping on the frontier."

"StarTalk" airs Sundays at 11 p.m. on National Geographic Channel.

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Louis Friedman, an aerospace engineer and author of "Human Spaceflight: From Mars to the Stars," believes that humans may never travel past Mars. The former head of The Planetary Society says technology will replace exploring humans.

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If humankind successfully lands people on the surface of Mars, we could discover an important clue about the origins of life on Earth — one of the greatest scientific mysteries in human history. 

A theory called panspermia, which dates back to the 5th century BC, posits that certain life forms can hop between planets, and even star systems, to fertilize them with life. 

Following this theory, some scientists suspect that the first life on Earth never formed on our planet at all, but instead, hitched a ride inside planetary fragments from Mars that were flung into space after a powerful impact and eventually fell to Earth. We could be the aliens!

While some write the theory off as outrageous, others think it could harbor some potential. If true, it could deeply impact how we identify ourselves as a species. 

By studying the planet's geography, atmosphere, and soil composition, planetary scientists know that billions of years ago, Mars was once a warm, wet world with conditions ideal for life.

Why a manned mission to Mars is necessary

None of the landers or satellites we've sent to the Red Planet thus far have uncovered evidence of past or present life of any kind. 

It's possible that a robot simply cannot dig deep enough or collect enough of the right kind of sample. In the end, it might take a human to explore what robotic rovers cannot.

Plus, what it takes NASA's best Mars rovers a week to do, a well-equipped human could complete in 15 minutes, according to mechanical engineer and popular science communicator Bill Nye in his latest book "Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World."

"If we found microbes on Mars that are clearly related to those on Earth, such a discovery would change the course of human history ... everyone everywhere would soon come to feel differently about what it means to be a living thing in the cosmos," Nye writes. 

It won't be a surprise

This kind of discovery, however, won't come suddenly, according to Linda Billings, the consultant to NASA's Astrobiology and Near Earth Object Programs. 

"As is the case with most scientific discoveries, the discovery of extraterrestrial life will likely be a prolonged process," Billings told Business Insider. "Claims of evidence of extraterrestrial life will be subjected to peer review, and other scientists will continue to look for further evidence."

One example of this prolonged process took place in the mid-90's when a team of scientists announced that they found convincing evidence for extraterrestrial life inside of a Martian meteorite — a rock that formed on Mars, were ejected into space after a powerful impact by an asteroid or comet, and eventually landed on Earth. 

To date, scientists have identified 132 Martian meteorites.

In 1996, the NASA-led team published a paper in the prestigious journal Science that they'd identified grooves and organic compounds in the "ALH8400" Martian meteorite, discovered in Antarctica, that could be fossilized evidence for extraterrestrial nanobacteria.

"The astrobiology community spent months into years investigating those claims," Billings said. "Eventually a consensus emerged in the science community that the original claim of fossil evidence of martian life did not stand up to scrutiny."

If astrobiologists do eventually discover that life came from Mars, NASA will be ready for what happens next. 

NASA explores the repercussions 

In 2011, NASA and the Library of Congress established the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Astrobiology Program, which explores the philosophical, religious, ethical, legal, and cultural impact related to the possible discovery of extraterrestrial life.

The current chair of the program, Nathaniel Comfort, who is also a scientific historian and professor at the Institute of the History of Medicine at The Johns Hopkins University, shared his thoughts with Business Insider about what the notion that we all have a little Martian in us might mean:

"It wouldn't alter the views of those who hold literal interpretations of Scripture. And the rest of evolution would follow as before," Comfort said. "The tabloids would have a field day of course. But once the headlines faded and the conferences ended, I think life would continue on much as before."

As for the people who dedicate their lives to the scientific process, Comfort said:

"Academics would debate questions of human identity afresh  ... in short, it might throw an existential monkey wrench into the works, but the principles of moral behavior would remain the same."

The probability of panspermia 

The idea that life came from Mars is a highly-debated topic. Both Comfort and Billings agree that the possibility is unlikely. 

"It seems to me extremely unlikely that life on Earth came from Mars (or anywhere else)," Comfort said. "The logic and data I find most persuasive dismisses the idea of life coming from a 'seed' at all, whether terrestrial or not."

Yet, other scientists, like Steven Benner — who's a chemist and one of the world's leading experts on the origins of life — argue otherwise. 

In 2013, Benner said during a talk at the Goldschmidt conference for geochemists that Mars might have been a better place for life to begin than Earth. 

That's because ancient Martian meteorites contain more boron and molybdenum — important precursors to the formation of RNA — than early Earth. 

Moreover, Christopher Adcock and Elizabeth Hausrath, both researchers at the University of Nevada in 2013, discovered that phosphates — another important chemical in the formation of RNA, DNA, and essential proteins — in Martian meteorites are more water-soluble than those on early Earth.

And since life is suspected to have begun in the presence of water, their research suggests that Mars could have formed life more readily than Earth.

However, studying Martian meteorites for signs of life has been ongoing for over two decades without success. Perhaps the only way to know for sure if we are the true aliens is to head to Mars ourselves and dig up the potential proof.

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Scientists have figured out how to create a new ion engine that uses 100 million times less fuel than a chemical rocket.

Though the device is a lot less powerful, it could some day be a cost-effective and efficient alternative to ship supplies or even people to Mars.

NASA has used ion engines for decades, but the current models come with a huge drawback: They burn out after about a year of use.

Ion engines propel a spacecraft one atom at a time. The devices rip electrons off xenon gas to create a stream of charged particles.

Next the ions pass through a magnetic field, which speeds up the particles to about 45,000 mph.

Then a field of electrons neutralizes the particles so they continue shooting out of the engine and create thrust (instead of being attracted back toward the magnetic field).

But in traditional ion engines, sometimes called Hall thrusters, the constant bombardment of energized particles against the back wall of the engine gradually wears it down until the device shorts out — so they can only operate for about 10,000 hours (1.1 year) of spaceflight.

We'd need them to last closer to 50,000 hours (5.7 years) to be useful them for missions to Mars and beyond.

So to prolong the life of an ion engine, the researchers decided to completely take out the wall that gets worn down over time. Now the charging and acceleration of the particles happens entirely outside of the engine cavity.

The image below shows what one of the wall-less engines looks like. The positively charged anode (red) helps charge up the xenon particles (Xe), and the magnetic field lines (purple) accelerate the particles.

The engine design on the left didn't work because the anode was set up in the middle of the magnetic field. The new design keeps the anode clear of the field:

A long-lasting ion engine would be invaluable because the devices could propel spacecraft faster than chemical engines — it just takes them a long time to rev up.

"It's like taking four days to accelerate from 0 to 90 km/hour with a car," Julien Vaudolon, lead researcher of the new study, told Tech Insider in an email.

"But the thruster can be fired for accumulated periods of time much above those of chemical spacecrafts," he wrote. "So in the long term you will exceed the typical velocities attained by regular rockets."

Ion engines come with other bonuses too.

They need far less fuel than chemical engines — about 100 million times less— so they're cheaper to operate. The spacecraft also doesn't have to be loaded up with so much fuel, freeing up extra room for cargo or astronauts. The chance of an explosion is also lower, too, since xenon is inert.

The research team hopes their new design will prolong the life of a plasma engine near or past 50,000 hours, but they haven't done any tests yet.

"Preliminary theoretical investigations indicate that the lifespan may lie around 50,000 hours," Vaudolon said. "But once again, this has not been validated by any test."

If they can accomplish this, then we might be close to figuring out a cost-effective and efficient way to send supplies to Mars and possibly even human colonists (if they don't mind a longer journey, that is).

The research team is already working on new models to test the durability of their ion engine concept.

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President Obama just revealed his favorite movie of 2015: Ridley Scott's "The Martian."

According to Vanity Fair, Obama didn't offer any explanation for why it was his favorite, but he's certainly not the only one who loved the movie.

I think "The Martian" is the best space sci-fi movie made in my time. Here's why.

"The Martian," directed by Ridley Scott, is a gritty survivalist tale that follows the story of astronaut Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon). Watney gets stranded on Mars when his crew is forced to leave him for dead during a major dust storm. When he wakes up, all he has is a space habitat designed to last for only 30 days and no way to contact anyone on Earth.

The next crew isn't coming to Mars for another four years, but Watney is determined to survive until they arrive.

On the surface, "The Martian" may sound a little like "Interstellar" 2.0: a big budget sci-fi movie where Matt Damon gets stranded in space. We're all aware of the symmetry.

"Why yes, Matt Damon did play a stranded astronaut in Interstellar," author of "The Martian" Andy Weir tweeted in June. "Thank you, thousands of people, for pointing that out over and over."

But the similarities start and end there. What makes "The Martian" such a brilliant, captivating film is that it has more science fact than science fiction. This may sound counter-intuitive — a nerdy, science-heavy plot is a turnoff for a lot of moviegoers.

Luckily, all the science in the "The Martian" is executed by a charming, hilarious character who makes it feel real and accessible. That also means no one will feel so intimidated that they miss the point of the story: a celebration of human perseverance and ingenuity.

Since everything that happens is so realistic, and (mostly) backed up by real science, the movie flows like a highlight reel of some of the most incredible feats the human race is capable of — we really can send humans through 140 million miles of space to Mars, and we really can survive there. Some day.

In short, it's inspiring. And not in a "gee, wouldn't it be cool if we had warp drives or teleportation" kind of way. All of the spacecraft, spacesuits, and rovers in the movie are based on real technologies we already have or that are within reach. So even though we haven't sent humans to Mars yet, this movie is a picture of how we could do it — and how we could do it soon.

Science fact vs. science fiction

Director Ridley Scott had wonderful reference material to achieve the movie's potent realism: Weir's book. The author spent an ungodly amount of time researching everything from astronomy to chemistry to orbital physics while writing "The Martian."

He even wrote his own software to calculate the orbital paths he uses for spacecraft in the story.

"To a nerd like me, working out all the math and physics for Mark's problems and solutions was fun," Weir wrote in a Q&A at the end of the book. "The more I worked on it, the more I realized I had accidentally spent my life researching for this story."

And the film adaptation keeps most of that intact.

There's a moment in the movie when Mark Watney realizes the gravity of his situation and says "I'm going to have to science the shit out of this." And boy, does he.

Almost every scene sticks to hard science. Like what can happen when you mess with rocket fuel:

And when your habitat airlock breaks due to a completely plausible design flaw:

NASA even got in on the film. While the government agency can't support a private enterprise, NASA experts consulted on the movie, and production has worked very closely with NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab officials, Weir said.

NASA also gave permission for the film to use the copyrighted — and coveted — NASA logo on its costumes, as you can see in these screenshots from the trailer:

Why the science won't scare you

It's easy to dive in too deep when it comes to the science of space travel. A lot of it is, after all, rocket science.

But the movie found a way to dip its toes in without drowning anyone. It describes how you can make water out of hydrazine rocket fuel without getting into the nitty-gritty chemistry. It references complicated rocket maneuvers, but smartly relies on visuals to explain the crux of them.

And while it's devoted to scientific realism, the movie does exercise its fiction liberty where it should. For example, communication between Earth and Mars in reality would be on a 20-minute time lag. "The Martian" largely — and wisely — ignores this fact to avoid seemingly choppy editing and a movie that'd last as long as a Mars mission itself.

Somehow, "The Martian" strikes a perfect balance between fact and fantasy.

Good choice Obama.

You can watch the first trailer here:

And the second trailer here:

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NASA released new footage of the humanoid robot they want to send to Mars.

The robot, named Valkyrie, is being tested for its ability to handle the red planet's rocky terrain and hope it can also assist future astronauts with lifting heavy objects.

Produced by Lamar Salter. Original reporting by Jessica Orwig.

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2015 marked 50 years of successful NASA missions to Mars which started with Mariner 4 in 1965. These are the NASA rovers and satellites currently exploring the planet.

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In an interview with GQ, Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk explained some of the potential obstacles to one of his greatest ambitions: creating a living community on the red planet Mars.

First, Musk says there’s a chance humans will not always have the technologies to get us to Mars.

“There’s a window that could be opened for a long time or a short time where we have an opportunity to establish a self-sustaining base on Mars before something happens to drive the technology level on Earth below where it’s possible,” he said.

Musk fears the window of opportunity might close before Earth and its transportation system to and from Mars could become self-sustaining.

More notably, he also feared how a “third World War” could impact technological progress.

“I don’t think we can discount the possibility of a third World War,” Musk said. “You know, in 1912 they were proclaiming a new age of peace and prosperity, saying that it was a golden age, war was over. And then you had World War I followed by World War II followed by the Cold War. So I think we need to acknowledge that there's certainly a possibility of a third World War, and if that does occur it could be far worse than anything that's happened before. Let's say nuclear weapons are used. I mean, there could be a very powerful social movement that's anti-technology. There's also growth in religious extremism. Like, I mean, does ISIS grow…?"

You can read more about Musk’s thoughts on Mars, as well as his thoughts on self-driving cars, a next-generation spacesuit and much more, over at GQ.

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The biggest sci-fi hit of 2015 all began with Andy Weir and his best-selling book "The Martian," which is a thrilling survival story based on the planet Mars.

Weir is a software engineer by profession and American novelist by hobby. So, he's got a mind for science.

But he's also a wise-creaking jokester, just like his novel's hero, Mark Watney.

In celebration of the film's release to Digital HD and 3D Blu-ray on Dec. 22, Weir recently spoke with Business Insider, and we couldn't help but appeal to his comedic side.

So, we asked him to tell us a couple of his favorite science jokes, and he didn't disappoint!

While Weir could have a crowd of mathematicians and physicists chuckling with his collection of ready-upon-request jokes, the rest of us might need a quick science refresher to appreciate the punch lines.

Here are two of Weir's favorite science jokes with a brief science refresher:

Andy Weir Joke #1

The joke starts out:

"An ion walks into a bar and says 'I think I left an electron here last night.' And the bartender say 'Are you sure?'"

What does the ion say?

Here's a basic review of atoms and ions. See if you can guess what the ion says as you refresh your brain with some chemistry.

At a basic level, atoms are made of electrons that orbit around a nucleus. But sometimes atoms gain or lose electrons.

When that happens, we call that atom an ion. When an ion gains an electron it is negatively charged and when it loses an electron, it's positively charged.

Here's the full joke:

"An ion walks into a bar and says 'I think I left an electron here last night.' And the bartender says 'Are you sure?' And the ion says 'I'm positive.'"

Andy Weir Joke #2

The joke begins like this:

"What do you get when you cross a mountain climber with a mosquito?"

See if you can guess after this brief review of mathematics.

This joke involves what mathematicians call scalars and vectors.

Basically, scalars and vectors are quantities that mathematicians and physicists use to express the world around us.

What you need to know is that you can multiply vectors together using a "cross product", but vectors can't be combined with scalars in this way. It's just a mathematical no no.

Here's the full joke:

"What do you get when you cross a mountain climber with a mosquito? Nothing! You can't cross a scalar with a vector."

We know that Weir's science jokes are a bit on the nerdy side, but that's why we enjoy them!

We wouldn't expect anything less from a guy who wrote the book that spawned one of the most scientifically accurate sci-fi films of all time.

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SpaceX has set a record in the race to make commercial space flight a reality. Elon Musk and his company have successfully launched and landed a rocket at their Cape Canaveral headquarters. 

Produced by Emma Fierberg.  Special thanks to Jessica Orwig. 

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If Earth is ever threatened by an apocalyptic event, how can we ensure the survival of the human species? The answer may be to move to Mars. Here's how it could happen.

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Oliver Giddings is a five-year-old British boy who dreams of one day becoming an astronaut.

And he certainly has the first step down: a curiosity for space.

This year, Giddings wrote to the Royal Mail asking how much it would cost to send a Christmas card to Mars.

Right now there's no one to send a Christmas card to on Mars right now — except the robotic rovers exploring the surface, like NASA's Curiosity rover shown right. However, humankind might one day colonize the red planet, and then Christmas cards might not sound so bizarre.

Instead of ignoring Giddings inquiry, the postal service employees contacted one of the few agencies in the world who know exactly how expensive it is to land payloads on Mars: NASA.

Scientists at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida estimated that sending a card that weights 100 grams (0.22 pounds) to Mars would cost Giddings about £11,600 (British pounds), or $17,253, the Daily Mirror reported.

This amount includes the cost of the rocket fuel necessary to get the card on course to Mars as well as the weight of the card, since payload weight is one of the cost drivers of rocket launches.

While $17,000 is nothing compared to NASA's multi-billion dollar Mars rover missions, it's still an obscene amount of money for a card.

When the Royal Mail sent NASA's response to Giddings, he said, "Wow! That's a lot of money. It's very expensive to send a letter to Mars. You would need so many stamps!"

If we do send humans to live on Mars in the future, digital Christmas cards will be faster and cheaper. That said, NASA gave Giddings something invaluable this year: the gift of knowledge.

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NASA may dream of sending humans to Mars in the coming decades, but the fact remains that nobody's really sure how we'll survive the journey or set up camp on the red planet.

The Orion spacecraft that will drive astronauts to Mars has a diameter that's about the length of a pickup truck. That's not a lot of space when you consider the astronauts' journey to Mars will take at least 6 months.

In order to not go totally bonkers, Mars-bound astronauts will need a larger place to live, complete with private quarters and exercise equipment. NASA envisions the Orion capsule could link up to a habitation module in space, but right now they have no idea what that module could look like. And who knows what the astronauts will live in once they get to Mars.

Now SpaceNews says that a report attached to the recent omnibus spending bill has allocated funds for NASA to figure it out. The bill orders NASA to spend at least $55 million to develop a habitation module for deep space exploration, and to have a prototype ready by 2018.

That would be great timing, since NASA wants to test out its new space habitat around the moon in the 2020s before sending it to Mars in the 2030s.

However, whether NASA could have something ready by 2018 seems debatable. At this point, the agency pretty much has a blank slate as to what the habitat would look like and how it would function. Shielding astronauts from space radiation while also maintaining a light weight will be one of the major challenges.

Thus far Bigelow Aerospace's inflatable habitat stands out as a frontrunner--a test version of the habitat will soon be deployed on the International Space Station. SpaceNews reports that NASA has also awarded funds to Boeing, Lockheed, Martin, Orbital ATK, and other companies to look into potential habitat designs.

It looks like NASA will have to step up its game, and fast. The report requires NASA to come back with a status update about how it has distributed funds within 180 days of the bill becoming law, which happened on December 18.

[Via SpaceNews]

This article originally appeared on Popular Science.

This article was written by Sarah Fecht from Popular Science and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

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The International Space Station is the longest-running continuously inhabited human outpost in space – this year it celebrated its 15th anniversary. As the ISS orbits the Earth it is essentially in a state of free fall, counteracting the Earth’s gravity and providing an ideal platform for science in space.

Science aboard the ISS is decidedly cross-disciplinary, including fields as diverse as microbiology, space science, fundamental physics, human biology, astronomy, meteorology and Earth observation to name a few. But let’s take a look at some of the biggest findings.

1. The fragility of the human body

The effects of the space environment on the human body during long duration spaceflight are of significant interest if we want to one day venture far beyond the Earth. A crewed journey to Mars, for example, may take a year, and the same time again for the return leg.

Microgravity research on the ISS has demonstrated that the human body would lose considerable bone and muscle mass on such a mission. Mitigation technology, involving the use of resistive exercise devices, has shown that it is possible to substantially alleviate bone and muscle loss. Coupled with other studies into appropriate nutrition and drug use, these investigations may lead to improvements in the treatment of osteoporosis, a condition affecting millions of people across the globe.

2. Interplanetary contamination

A long-term goal of many space agencies is to fly humans to Mars. The red planet is of particular interest because it is one of the most accessible locations in which past or present extraterrestrial life may exist. It is imperative, therefore, that we do not inadvertently contaminate Mars with terrestrial organisms. Likewise, we must be careful not to back-contaminate Earth with any possible Martian life forms during a sample return mission. 

Certain hardy bacterial spores, such as the Bacillus subtilis in the picture were exposed to space aboard the ISS, but shielded from solar UV-radiation, and demonstrated a high survival rate. The space vacuum and temperature extremes alone were not enough to kill them off. These remarkable bugs could be capable of surviving an interplanetary space flight to Mars and live there, under a thin layer of soil, were they to be accidentally deposited by a spacecraft.

This finding has huge implications; if microorganisms, or their DNA, can survive interplanetary spaceflight, albeit by natural means, it leaves open the possibility that life on Earth may originally have arrived from Mars, or elsewhere .

3. Growing crystals for medicine

A key challenge in developing effective medicines is understanding the shape of protein molecules in the human body. Proteins are responsible for a huge range of biological functions, including DNA replication and digestion – and protein crystallography is an essential tool for understanding protein structure. Crystal growth within a fluid on Earth is somewhat inhibited by gravity-driven convection and the settling out of denser particles at the bottom of the fluid vessel.

Crystals in a microgravity environment may be grown to much larger sizes than on Earth, enabling easier analysis of their micro-structure. Protein crystals grown on the ISS are being used in the development of new drugs for diseases such as muscular dystrophy and cancer.

4. Cosmic rays and dark matter

Space is permeated by a constant flux of energetic charged particles called cosmic rays. When cosmic rays encounter the Earth’s atmosphere they disintegrate, producing a shower of secondary particles which can be detected at ground level. Some cosmic rays may emanate from explosive events such as supernovae or, closer to home, flares on our own sun. But in many cases their source is unknown.

In order to better understand these enigmatic particles, we need to catch them before they reach the atmosphere. Mounted on the ISS is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), the most sensitive particle detector ever launched into space. This device collects cosmic rays and measures both their energy and incoming direction.

In 2013, early results showed that cosmic ray electrons and their anti-matter counterparts, positrons, emanated from all directions in space, rather than from specific locations.

Approximately one quarter of the mass-energy of the universe is believed to be comprised of dark matter, a substance of unknown composition, which may be a source of cosmic rays. The theorized presence of dark matter envisages a halo of the material surrounding the Milky Way (and other galaxies), and is thus supported by the isotropic nature of the cosmic ray electrons and positrons detected by AMS, essentially coming at us from all directions in space.

It has never been detected directly and it’s true nature is one of the greatest unanswered questions in modern astrophysics.

5. Efficient combustion

Deliberately starting a fire on an orbital space station does not sound, initially, like a good idea. It turns out, however, that the physics of flames in microgravity is quite interesting. The flame extinguishment study is an understandably carefully designed facility whereby tiny droplets of fuel, which form into spheres under microgravity, are ignited.

Flames on Earth assume their familiar shape because gravity-driven convection results in an updraught of air, drawing the burning mixture of fuel and gas upwards. In microgravity there is no updraught and so a flame assumes a diffuse spherical shape around the combustion source. Further, the yellow colour of a flame is produced by the incandescence of tiny soot particles. Soot forms from incomplete burning of the fuel and is a pollutant.

In microgravity, the combustion of a fuel is more complete and hence more efficient. A candle flame that would appear yellow on Earth, actually burns with a blue colour in microgravity and produces much less smoke. This kind of research enables the study of soot formation processes which has negative impacts on the environment and human health, and how droplets of fuel in a combustion engine transition from a liquid to a gas as they burn. This may one day lead to more efficient designs for combustion engines on Earth.

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The International Space Station is the longest-running continuously inhabited human outpost in space, and this year it celebrated its 15th anniversary.

As the ISS orbits the Earth it is essentially in a state of free fall, counteracting the Earth’s gravity and providing an ideal platform for science in space.

Science aboard the ISS is decidedly cross-disciplinary, including fields as diverse as microbiology, space science, fundamental physics, human biology, astronomy, meteorology and Earth observation to name a few.

But let’s take a look at some of the biggest findings:

1. The fragility of the human body

The effects of the space environment on the human body during long duration spaceflight are of significant interest if we want to one day venture far beyond the Earth. A crewed journey to Mars, for example, may take a year, and the same time again for the return leg.

Microgravity research on the ISS has demonstrated that the human body would lose considerable bone and muscle mass on such a mission. Mitigation technology, involving the use of resistive exercise devices, has shown that it is possible to substantially alleviate bone and muscle loss. Coupled with other studies into appropriate nutrition and drug use, these investigations may lead to improvements in the treatment of osteoporosis, a condition affecting millions of people across the globe.

2. Interplanetary contamination

A long-term goal of many space agencies is to fly humans to Mars. The red planet is of particular interest because it is one of the most accessible locations in which past or present extraterrestrial life may exist. It is imperative, therefore, that we do not inadvertently contaminate Mars with terrestrial organisms. Likewise, we must be careful not to back-contaminate Earth with any possible Martian life forms during a sample return mission.

Certain hardy bacterial spores, such as the Bacillus subtilis in the picture were exposed to space aboard the ISS, but shielded from solar UV-radiation, and demonstrated a high survival rate. The space vacuum and temperature extremes alone were not enough to kill them off. These remarkable bugs could be capable of surviving an interplanetary space flight to Mars and live there, under a thin layer of soil, were they to be accidentally deposited by a spacecraft.

This finding has huge implications; if microorganisms, or their DNA, can survive interplanetary spaceflight, albeit by natural means, it leaves open the possibility that life on Earth may originally have arrived from Mars, or elsewhere.

3. Growing crystals for medicine

A key challenge in developing effective medicines is understanding the shape of protein molecules in the human body. Proteins are responsible for a huge range of biological functions, including DNA replication and digestion – and protein crystallography is an essential tool for understanding protein structure. Crystal growth within a fluid on Earth is somewhat inhibited by gravity-driven convection and the settling out of denser particles at the bottom of the fluid vessel.

Crystals in a microgravity environment may be grown to much larger sizes than on Earth, enabling easier analysis of their micro-structure. Protein crystals grown on the ISS are being used in the development of new drugs for diseases such as muscular dystrophy and cancer.