Space- Crazy Far

Space- Crazy Far. To the stars, that is. Will we ever get crazy enough to go?
Thousands of colonists might live on this interstellar Mayflower for a journey lasting generations. The ship has its own ecosystem and artificial gravity from its rotating cylindrical hull. A sister ship looms in the giant window.     Art by Stephan Martiniere/National Geographic

Space- Crazy Far Art by Stephan Martiniere/National Geographic



A 22nd-century dream: An unmanned probe powered by nuclear fusion explores a new solar system, after traveling several decades from Earth at 100 million miles an hour.

 

Space- Crazy Far Photograph by NASA Marshall Space Flight Center/National Geographic

This 3,400-square-foot Mylar solar sail was tested in 2005 in a vacuum chamber at NASA’s Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, Ohio. NASA plans to launch Sunjammer, a probe with a sail four times as big, on a yearlong cruise toward the sun in 2014.

 

The New Age of Exploration (1)National Geographic



The images are from the January issue of National Geographic magazine.

source National Geographic