Mars calling – working on alternate method to get to the Red Planet

#Hohmanntransfer #marsmission The temptation to go to the Red Planet is forcing scientists to work overtime and come up with alternate methods to go to Mars. While the traditional missions involve large rockets for both blasting off and slowing down during landing, researchers feel that there may be a simpler, cheaper way.
Their thinking is that instead of blasting off to the red planet and using rockets to slow themselves down, future craft could use planetary gravity fields to 'drift' into the Martian atmosphere. That is a new and revolutionary theory of putting the gravity of Mars to latch on to the spacecraft and pull it down.
Such a method, termed as ballistic capture, could be a great help to open the Martian frontier for more robotic missions, future manned expeditions and even colonization efforts. It seems NASA has expressed an interest in this method. As James Green, director of NASAs Planetary Science Division has commented - 'it's an eye-opener … it could be a pretty big step for us and really save us resources and capability, which is always what we're looking for.'
Traditional missions use rockets to shoot for the location Mars will be in its orbit where the spacecraft will meet it - known as a Hohmann transfer. The process would be to put the spacecraft into a Mars-like orbit so that it flies ahead of the planet, and keeps slowing down until it is pulled in by the gravitational force. This unique method could one day be used for manned missions to Mars – only, it would add several more months to mission times.