Space Travel And COVID-19 are like Baking-Soda and Vinegar

Written by: Ellie Casaubon

Edited by: Ellie Casaubon, Cooper Baehr, and Tej Date

COVID-19 has ruined many things. One thing that it has negatively impacted, is space. All NASA workers are required to work from home. The one exception is for employees that need to come in to protect any forms of life or anything that has an important frame. To go with that, for the time being, NASA has stopped most building and testing of capsules and rockets. According to www.space.com, the Russian space agency has postponed its launch that was intended to go to Mars from July of this year to 2022. It would have to be in 2022 because in order for the item to go to Mars to traveling the shortest distance possible. The two planets have to be aligned. This alignment only occurs once every 26 months. That means that you can launch something to Mars once every 2⅛ years. While you may think that COVID-19 is only impacting public space travel companies like NASA, it is also impacting private space travel companies like SpaceX. Yesterday, SpaceX was going to launch a satellite, but that too got postponed. Another reason that space travel companies are postponing launches is because of the risk that comes with astronauts getting sick in space. In space, since there are 0-g’s, viruses can spread easier. The virus can float through the air and a crew member can breath in the air, and they would get the virus. While reading an article, space.com brought up a good point. They said, “Once we start, if we start making lunar settlements, Martian Settlements, we don’t know what those Quarters and Habitats might look like, But it's likely that there won't be very many of us yet And that we might be pretty close together. We might be a little group of us in a tunnel on Mars. And so if something went to break out, it might be a little bit of an issue.” Our next article will be published on 3/31/20 and will be focusing on what grocery stores are doing to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

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