When NASA’s Perseverance Rover landed on Mars in February last year, it had travelled for more than six months in the harsh environment of interplanetary space. In that time, it experienced huge radiation levels and the constant threat of even more extreme radiation from coronal mass ejections from the Sun.
Those are exactly the conditions that human astronauts would prefer to avoid should they ever make the journey. The radiation associated with such a journey could have fatal consequences for a crew. So finding a quicker way to Mars is essential for humanity’s ambitions to visit and colonize the Red Planet.
