Deep space
The Musk mission
One of, if not the, most, plausible way for humans to travel into deep space is with the help of Elon Musk. Musk has publicly explained he intends to send a manned mission to Mars by 2030, so in the next 8 years there might be some deep Space activity happening. Despite its sub-zero temperatures (-63°C), thin atmosphere, radiation, lack of liquid surface water and dust storms, Mars has been chosen to be the next planet our species will inhabit. This is due to the many similarities our planet shares with the red planet. Apart from the already stated problems, the atmosphere is primarily CO 2 , with some nitrogen and argon, meaning the atmosphere can be compressed and used to grow plants; gravity is also 38% that of Earth, meaning heavier items would be a piece of cake to lift and you could finally say you benched 180kg. The aspect of the planet most similar is the length of the day, with Mars coming in at 24 hrs 37 min. While manned missions to Mars may become frequent in the coming years, it will most likely take at least a decade or two to establish infrastructure on the planet, with the average middle-class family having to spend their life savings to afford the journey. However, when we do make it to Mars, it will have broken a 50+ year abstinence from deep space.
Capturing deep space
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was launched on the 25 th of December 2021 and has goals to complete and extend the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope, previously the most advanced telescope. So far, the JWST has delivered the highest-resolution images of the distant universe and will continue to do so. The most known image taken by the JWST is of the Carina Nebula, located 7,500 light years away and below is a comparison between the Hubble telescope (on the left) and the JWST (below).
Until we figure out reasonable methods of travel to deep space, capturing deep s pace is what we’ve got and it's quite interesting. I have taken up astrophotography as a hobby over the past two years and the equipment I have is not prohibitvely expensive. I have a DSLR, a tripod, a star tracker, free computer software and have managed to take images of nebulae 4,077 light years away. While it might seem cool to travel and explore deep space, it is quite unreasonable and, until we have more affordable methods of transport, it is inaccessible to most people in the world (Dunbar, 2022).
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