The average duration of an astronaut's mission is six months or 182 days, but the amount of time varies depending on the mission. International Space Station missions, known as expeditions, usually last about six months. During a mission, there are three to six crew members on board. There are several professional space travelers who come from countries such as the United States, Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan.
The Spanish-American space traveler Mike López-Alegria has flown the longest mission of the US space station to date, with 215 days. Former cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov has spent 14 months aboard the Russian space station Mir. However, space travel used to last only two weeks during the existence of the Space Shuttle. According to NASA (opens in a new tab), a one-way trip to Mars would take about nine months.
If you wanted to make a round trip, in total, it would take about 21 months, since you'll have to wait about three months on Mars to make sure that Earth and Mars are in a suitable place to make the trip back home. The group consists of cosmonauts Ivan Vagner and Anatoly Ivanishin, and NASA space explorer Chris Cassidy. For this mission, the Crew Dragon will be modernized with a giant glass dome at the tip of the spacecraft, specifically for the crew to enjoy panoramic views of the cosmos. We analyzed how long a trip to the Red Planet would last with the available technology and explored some of the factors that would affect travel time.
However, this mission has been heralded as the beginning of a new era of space travel in which ordinary people, instead of the astronauts selected by the government and the odd adventurer with a lot of money, wear the mantle of space exploration. The launch of NASA's SpaceX was scheduled for Wednesday, but it had to be delayed due to poor weather conditions. The SpaceX mission is now scheduled for May 30 and will launch two NASA astronauts into space. This mission, called Inspiration4, is the first orbital mission in the history of space flight in which tourists or non-astronauts participate exclusively.
The space shuttle will dock at the International Space Station approximately 24 hours after reaching orbit. Photon propulsion would rely on a powerful laser to accelerate the spacecraft to speeds close to the speed of light. According to the website of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the ideal alignment for a Mars launch would be to get you to the planet in approximately nine months. The fastest spacecraft is NASA's Parker solar probe, as it continues to break its own speed records as it approaches the Sun.
To complete the trip, your spaceship will dive back into the atmosphere to re-enter flames and dive off the coast of Florida. Traveling through the farthest passage of Earth and Mars would involve a trip directly through the Sun, while spaceships must necessarily move in orbit around the star of the solar system. NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) will be the new battle engine to bring the next missions, and possibly human, to the red planet. However, NASA estimates that Crew Dragon has a 1 in 270 chance of suffering a catastrophic failure, based on a metric used by the space agency.
