Mars Piloted Orbital Station (or Marspost) is a Russian concept for an orbital human mission to Mars, with several proposed configurations, including using a nuclear reactor to run an electric rocket engine. A 30-volume draft proposal was produced in 2005.[ citation needed ] The design for the proposed ship was proposed to be ready in 2012, and the ship itself in 2021. [1] The concept did not undergo detailed design nor development.
Marpost would be launched to Mars together with a fleet of robotic spacecraft designed to study the planet both from its orbit and on its surface, while the crew would remain in Mars orbit. The station would reach Mars orbit from where its crew would research Mars by operating the robots; for this reason the mission is called a 'hybrid'.
Since the robots would be controlled by Marpost crewmembers from Martian orbit it would eliminate one of the basic problems of robotic Mars missions, the 4 to 24 minute delay for radio signals to reach the Earth. [2] Samples of Martian soil would then be delivered by these robots to Marpost and later brought back to Earth. The whole duration of the flight would be 2.5 years with one month of work in Mars orbit. The mission would also investigate if people can survive a lengthy trip through deep space and effectively perform their tasks.
The idea of this 'hybrid' mission was first advanced by Yuri Karash. His article was published in the Russian Nezavisimaya Gazeta on October 18, 2000 under the title Vperyod, Na Mars! Rossii sleduyet vzyat kurs na sozdaniye marsianskoi pilotiruemoy orbitalnoy stantsii [Onward, to Mars! Russia needs to set a course toward the development of a Martian Piloted Orbital Station]. Karash claimed that Russia, while continuing its participation in the International Space Station program, should build the rest of Russian modules for the station but instead of attaching them to the ISS, assemble them in orbit as an autonomous complex and launch it to Mars with a crew on board. He also gave this space complex its name Marspost.
Further concepts see Marpost to pave the way for a joint Russian-American mission to the Martian surface. Russia, capitalizing on its extensive experience in building and operating long-term orbital space stations, would build a trans-planetary spacecraft while America, capitalizing on its experience gained during the Apollo Moon landing program, would build a Mars landing module.[ citation needed ]
The idea of Marpost was then picked up by Leonid Gorshkov, one of the main designers of the RKK Energia (Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya – Rocket-Space Corporation) company, the leading Russian space developer and builder of human spaceflight hardware. [3] Gorshkov proposed to use the space complex called MEK (Mezhplanetniy Ekspeditsioniy Komplex, or Interplanetary Expeditionary Complex), that was already developed and designed by RKK Energia. The projected cost would be $14–16 billion and the period of realization would be 12–14 years. The elements of MEK were initially proposed to be launched by the Energia heavy booster. Later however, in order to lower the cost of the mission, the elements of MEK were proposed to be launched by a Proton or Angara rocket. The overall mass of MEK is estimated at 400 tons. The flight from Earth orbit to Mars would be powered by ion thruster engines. [4]
Mars Direct is a proposal for a human mission to Mars which purports to be both cost-effective and possible with current technology. It was originally detailed in a research paper by Martin Marietta engineers Robert Zubrin and David Baker in 1990, and later expanded upon in Zubrin's 1996 book The Case for Mars. It now serves as a staple of Zubrin's speaking engagements and general advocacy as head of the Mars Society, an organization devoted to the colonization of Mars.
S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation "Energia" is a Russian manufacturer of spacecraft and space station components. Its name is derived from the Russian word for energy and is also named for Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, the first chief of its design bureau and the driving force behind early Soviet accomplishments in space exploration.
Uncrewed spacecraft or robotic spacecraft are spacecraft without people on board. Uncrewed spacecraft may have varying levels of autonomy from human input, such as remote control, or remote guidance. They may also be autonomous, in which they have a pre-programmed list of operations that will be executed unless otherwise instructed. A robotic spacecraft for scientific measurements is often called a space probe or space observatory.
Human spaceflight programs have been conducted, started, or planned by multiple countries and companies. Until the 21st century, human spaceflight programs were sponsored exclusively by governments, through either the military or civilian space agencies. With the launch of the privately funded SpaceShipOne in 2004, a new category of human spaceflight programs – commercial human spaceflight – arrived. By the end of 2022, three countries and one private company (SpaceX) had successfully launched humans to Earth orbit, and two private companies had launched humans on a suborbital trajectory.
The planet Mars has been explored remotely by spacecraft. Probes sent from Earth, beginning in the late 20th century, have yielded a large increase in knowledge about the Martian system, focused primarily on understanding its geology and habitability potential. Engineering interplanetary journeys is complicated and the exploration of Mars has experienced a high failure rate, especially the early attempts. Roughly sixty percent of all spacecraft destined for Mars failed before completing their missions, with some failing before their observations could begin. Some missions have been met with unexpected success, such as the twin Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, which operated for years beyond their specification.
Mars 96 was a failed Mars mission launched in 1996 to investigate Mars by the Russian Space Forces and not directly related to the Soviet Mars probe program of the same name. After failure of the second fourth-stage burn, the probe assembly re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, breaking up over a 320 km (200 mi) long portion of the Pacific Ocean, Chile, and Bolivia. The Mars 96 spacecraft was based on the Phobos probes launched to Mars in 1988. They were of a new design at the time and both ultimately failed. For the Mars 96 mission the designers believed they had corrected the flaws of the Phobos probes, but the value of their improvements was never demonstrated due to the destruction of the probe during the launch phase.
Kliper was an early-2000s proposed partially-reusable crewed spacecraft concept by RSC Energia. Due to lack of funding from the ESA and RSA, the project was indefinitely postponed by 2006.
The colonization of Mars is the proposed process of establishing and maintaining control of Martian land for exploitation and the possible settlement of Mars. Most colonization concepts focus on settling, but colonization is a broader ethical concept, which international space law has limited, and national space programs have avoided, focusing on a human mission to Mars to explore the planet. Settlement of Mars would involve migration of humans to the planet, the establishment of long-term human presence, and the exploitation of local resources. Though uncrewed rovers have explored Mars, there have been no crewed missions and there have been no return missions.
TMK was the designation of a Soviet space exploration project to send a crewed flight to Mars and Venus without landing.
The Parom is a space tug that has been proposed by RKK Energia. The purpose of this vehicle is to replace most of the Progress' active components. Progress spacecraft have flown re-supply missions since 1978. Nikolai Bryukhanov, RKK Energia's deputy general designer, said in May 2005 that the Federal Space Agency had received a design for a new space system. According to him, the system's operation principle is completely different from that used by Progress. A launch vehicle first places a Parom reusable inter-orbit "tug" into a 200 km orbit. As this spacecraft will not carry any consignments, other rockets will orbit payload containers that will be docked by Parom. The tug will then deliver them to the ISS or another orbiter.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to space exploration.
The LK was a lunar module developed in the 1960s as a part of several Soviet crewed lunar programs. Its role was analogous to the American Apollo Lunar Module (LM). Three LK modules, of the T2K variant, were flown without crew in Earth orbit, but no LK ever reached the Moon. The development of the N1 launch vehicle required for the lunar flight suffered setbacks, and the first Moon landings were achieved by US astronauts on Apollo 11. As a result, having lost the Space Race, both the N1 and the LK programs were cancelled without any further development.
The idea of sending humans to Mars has been the subject of aerospace engineering and scientific studies since the late 1940s as part of the broader exploration of Mars. Long-term proposals have included sending settlers and terraforming the planet. Currently, only robotic landers and rovers have been on Mars. The farthest humans have been beyond Earth is the Moon, under the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Apollo program which ended in 1972.
Orel or Oryol, formerly Federation, and PPTS, is a project by Roscosmos to develop a new-generation, partially reusable crewed spacecraft.
Progress M1-5 was the Progress spacecraft which was launched by Russia in 2001 to deorbit the fifteen-year-old Mir space station in a controlled fashion over a remote area of the southern Pacific Ocean otherwise Mir's orbit would have decayed uncontrolled over time, with debris potentially landing in a populated area. The Russian Aviation and Space Agency, Rosaviakosmos, was responsible for the mission.
The Orbital Piloted Assembly and Experiment Complex was a 2009–2017 proposed third-generation Russian modular space station for low Earth orbit. The concept was to use OPSEK to assemble components of crewed interplanetary spacecraft destined for the Moon, Mars, and possibly Saturn. The returning crew could also recover on the station before landing on Earth. Thus, OPSEK could form part of a future network of stations supporting crewed exploration of the Solar System.
Space architecture is the theory and practice of designing and building inhabited environments in outer space. This mission statement for space architecture was developed in 2002 by participants in the 1st Space Architecture Symposium, organized at the World Space Congress in Houston, by the Aerospace Architecture Subcommittee, Design Engineering Technical Committee (DETC), American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).
Prichal, also known as the Uzlovoy Module is a Russian-built component of the International Space Station (ISS). This cylindrical module has six docking ports to provide additional docking ports for Soyuz and Progress spacecraft, as well as potential future modules.
Mars-Grunt, also known as Expedition-M, is a proposed robotic Mars sample-return mission. It was proposed to the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) by the Russian Space Research Institute.
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