Could a laser send a spacecraft to Mars? That's a proposed mission from a group at McGill University, designed to meet a solicitation from NASA. The laser, a 10-meter wide array on Earth, would heat hydrogen plasma in a chamber behind the spacecraft, producing thrust from hydrogen gas and sending it to Mars in only 45 days. There, it would aerobrake in Mars' atmosphere, shuttling supplies to human colonists or, someday perhaps, even humans themselves.

In 2018, NASA challenged engineers to design a mission to Mars that would deliver a payload of at least 1,000 kilograms in no more than 45 days, as well as longer trips deep into, and out of, the solar system. The short delivery time is motivated by a desire to ferry shipments and, someday, astronauts to Mars while minimizing their exposure to the damaging effects of galactic cosmic rays and solar storms.

If you've ever tried to star gaze in a residential or urban area, you know that a streetlight or even the lights from a nearby town can greatly interfere with your ability to identify Orion's Belt and see a rare comet or other celestial bodies. But what is more of a disappointment for us is a cosmic disruption for scientists and others in the space industry.

To preserve this vital characteristic of the universe, a new International Astronomical Union Centre for the Protection of the Dark Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference has been established.

Siegfried Eggl, faculty member in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Robert Gruendl in Illinois' Dept. of Astronomy have been selected to participate. They are both members of the Center for AstroPhysical Surveys in the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at UIUC.