Discarded asteroid data hints at a 153-day Earth-to-Mars sprint
A Brazilian cosmologist, Marcelo de Oliveira Souza, uncovered a possible Earth-to-Mars trajectory that could, in theory, cut a round trip to about 153 days by using the early orbital solution of asteroid 2001 CA21 as a geometric reference plane and solving the transfer with Lambert methods. The fastest variant requires an impractically high departure speed (~27 km/s), and the result is a geometric demonstration, not a ready-to-build mission. The finding relies on preliminary asteroid data and would need broader validation across more objects before any planning use. The work highlights a methodological idea: discarded early asteroid orbits might reveal useful transfer geometries rather than being discarded outright.