It took Apollo 11 just over two days to reach the moon in 1969, but for non-manned missions, the voyage can take up to a year. Now, thanks to a new route designed by NASA, there is a faster and cheaper way to reach lunar orbit.
Designed by NASA’s upcoming Dark Ages Polarimeter Pathfinder (Dapper) mission, the new path uses a concept called “gravity assist” to take advantage of both the Earth’s and the moon’s gravity. Using this new method, the team would send a small spacecraft, about the size of a microwave, into high-Earth orbit by piggybacking off any number of communication satellites that regularly make the journey. Then, it would use gravity assist to accelerate and decelerate the craft at strategic moments to maximize fuel efficiency and speed up the craft’s path along the trajectory to the moon.
The new route is considerably more efficient, reducing Dapper’s overall mission time from six months to just two and a half, but if you want to use the trajectory, you’ll have to ask NASA first. The space agency’s patent on the new route was approved in June as the calculations and work that went into discovering it are a form of intellectual property.
The goal of the Dapper mission is to get an instrument to the “cone of silence” on the far side of the moon. This new route will allow researchers to complete their mission and learn more about this mysterious part of our universe sooner than expected!
