New and Improved Antimatter Spaceship for Mars Missions

New and Improved Antimatter Spaceship for Mars Missions Most self-respecting starships in science fiction stories use antimatter as fuel for a good reason – it’s the most potent fuel known. While tons of chemical fuel are needed to propel a human mission to Mars, just tens of milligrams of antimatter will do (a milligram is about one-thousandth the weight of a piece of the original M&M candy). Image right: A spacecraft powered by a positron reactor would resemble this artist's concept of the Mars Reference Mission spacecraft. Antimatter is sometimes called the mirror image of normal matter because while it looks just like ordinary matter, some properties are reversed. When antimatter meets matter, both annihilate in a flash of energy. Previous antimatter-powered spaceship designs employed antiprotons, which produce high-energy gamma rays when they annihilate. Image left: A diagram of a rocket powered by a positron reactor. It will be safer to launch as well.

NASA facilities NASA facilities exist across the United States, but also across the world. NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC provides overall guidance and political leadership to the agency.[1] There are 10 NASA field centers, which provide leadership for and execution of NASA's work. These field centers are: Ames (Research), Armstrong (Flight Research), Glenn (Research), Goddard (Space Flight), JPL (Space Flight), Johnson (Space), Kennedy (Space), Langley (Research), Marshall (Space Flight), Stennis (Space).[2][3] All other facilities fall under the leadership of at least one of these field centers.[4] Some facilities serve more than one application for historic or administrative reasons. NASA has used or supported various observatories and telescopes, and an example of this is the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility. List of the 10 NASA Field Centers[edit] Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland Kennedy Space Center, Florida John F. Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California John H. George C.