Mission to Mars (20 page)

Project Red Rocks would explore Deimos, the outermost moon of Mars
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Illustration Credit 6.5
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The Red Rocks mission would lay the groundwork for landing crews on Mars, contends Hopkins. Planners would have to learn how to guard astronauts from the effects of long-term zero gravity exposure and radiation, build trustworthy water recycling systems, and keep astronauts in high spirits when living in the isolated confines of a small habitat far from Earth.

Another activist for Phobos and Deimos as stepping-stones for human space exploration is Pascal Lee, co-founder and chairman of the Mars Institute, a planetary scientist at the SETI Institute, and the principal investigator of the Haughton-Mars Project at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.

Lee believes that the Martian moons are emerging as new targets for human exploration, objects that could be visited well before humans reach the surface of Mars itself. Lee and his colleagues have plotted out various science goals to probe the dual moons best done by on-the-scene crews, such as deep drilling and extraction of subsurface samples, 3-D imaging of the interior of each moon via seismic tomography, and searching the regolith of Phobos and Deimos for bits and pieces of asteroids, comets, and maybe the planet Mars itself.

Lee is quick to point out that a human march to Phobos and Deimos can’t be supported on science alone. However, if
human missions into Mars orbit are part of a logical, stepwise strategy on the way to a human landing on Mars, then the two moons are excellent candidates for the medium term, he says. Furthermore, Phobos, in particular, is ideally positioned to host teleoperated robotic scouts for an in-depth and aseptic reconnaissance of Mars. On that moon, modest infrastructure could be established to process, quarantine, and screen Martian samples brought up from Mars before sending them to eager scientists on Earth.

Lee and his team members suggested several years ago that there’s the chance of finding signs of life from Mars ejecta captured by Phobos, a prospect less likely for the outermost moon, Deimos. Consequently, Phobos, he senses, could be the “Library
of Alexandria” of Mars. Akin to the ancient Library in Alexandria, Egypt, this Martian moon could likely be a treasure trove, rife with knowledge and record keeping that documents all of Martian history.

Phobos landing sites were once charted for a Russian robotic lander, but no craft made it there
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Illustration Credit 6.6
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The idea of finding “little green microbes” on Phobos gained support in 2012 from Jay Melosh, a distinguished professor of earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences and physics and aerospace engineering at Purdue University. A specimen from the moon Phobos, which is much easier to reach than the red planet itself, he pointed out, would almost surely contain Martian material blasted off Mars from large asteroid impacts. If life on Mars exists or existed within the last ten million years, a mission to Phobos could yield the first evidence of life beyond Earth.

Melosh led a team chosen by NASA’s Planetary Protection Office to evaluate if a sample from Phobos could include enough recent material from Mars to carry viable Martian organisms. Combining their expertise in impact cratering and orbital mechanics, Melosh and his associates ran a series of computer simulations.

Their findings support the view that Phobos would have been on the receiving end of Mars material, flung out by large impact events that have happened on the planet over the past ten million years—a relatively recent event in geologic time, in other words. The team plotted more than ten million trajectories and evaluated which would intercept Phobos and where they might land on the moon during its nearly eight-hour orbit around Mars.

When President Obama made his space exploration speech in April 2010, I happened to have with me a small replica of Phobos. I showed the President my Martian moon model, and
reiterated my perspective that Phobos is the key to establishing human permanence on another planet in the solar system.

Human adventurers taking root on Phobos is technically achievable. Making use of this moon reduces risk in what must be a step-by-step assault on Mars. There is evolving belief that Phobos enables a steady tempo of exploration and scientific discovery. This moon will not disappoint. As an offshore world of Mars, it allows us to flex our interplanetary muscles, perfect our technological tool kit, and hone astronaut proficiency on the way to our decisive dive onto the beckoning Mars landscape, humankind’s future home.

Human habitation and exploration on Mars are within our reach
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Illustration Credit 6.7
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The red planet has long drawn our curiosity—and now there’s a rover prowling about Mars named just that. We first made eye contact with the world that holds its secrets tight thanks to Earth-based telescopes.

Mars is an intellectual magnet provoking thought. Consider the view of astronomer Percival Lowell, writing in his 1908 book,
Mars as the Abode of Life:

But science about Mars has proceeded ever since, and since 1960, telescopic-driven talk about life on Mars has been augmented by voyages of numbers of automated spacecraft—sent there by multiple nations. Mars has been flown by, orbited, smacked into, radar examined, and rocketed onto, as well as bounced upon, rolled over, shoveled, drilled into, baked, and even laser blasted. Still to come: Mars being stepped on.

Now and in the near future, robotic exploration of Mars is providing a window on a world that can be a true home away from home for future colonists.

The first footfalls on Mars will mark a historic milestone, an enterprise that requires human tenacity matched with technology to anchor ourselves on another world. Exploring Mars is a far different venture from Apollo expeditions to the moon; it necessitates leaving our home planet on lengthy missions with a constrained return capability. Once humans are at distant Mars, there is a very narrow window within which it’s feasible to return to Earth—a fundamental distinction between our reaching Earth’s moon in the 1960s and stretching outward to Mars in the decades to come.

All this is preface to a major judgment—one that I feel NASA planners are dodging. There is no reason to make a humans-to-Mars program look like an Apollo moon project.

We need to start thinking about building permanence on the red planet, and what it takes to do that. I feel very strongly about this. This is an entirely different mission than just putting people on the surface of that planet, claiming success, having them set up some experiments and plant a flag, to be followed by quickly bringing the crew back to Earth, as was done in the Apollo program.

Curiosity rover, now on Mars, is a robotic geologist
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Illustration Credit 7.1
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What are you going to do with astronauts who first reach the surface of Mars and then turn around and rocket back homeward? What are they going to do, write their memoirs? Would they go again? Having them repeat the voyage, in my view, is dim-witted. Why don’t they stay there on Mars?

No question, this is a very big, high-level decision that needs to be made. I can guarantee you, if we have anything like the legislative branch of government in the future that we have today, the first tragedy at Mars with a crew would mean cancellation of the program. And that’s all we do about Mars for another century.

I suggest that going to Mars means permanence on the planet—a mission by which we are building up a confidence level to become a two-planet species. At Mars, we’ve been given
a wonderful set of moons—two different choices—from which we can pre-position hardware and establish radiation shielding on the Martian surface to begin sustaining increasing numbers of people—not just one select group of individuals. To succeed at Mars, you cannot stop with a one-shot foray to the surface.

It will be a historical moment long remembered when the U.S. President commits the nation to permanent human presence on Mars. Let me hypothesize a political scenario on the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s landing on the moon, in 2019. The U.S. President, whoever that may be, takes the opportunity to direct the future of human space exploration, pioneered by Americans, by stating in a speech:
“I believe that this nation should commit itself, within two decades, to establish permanence on the planet Mars.
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That statement will live throughout history, committed to memory on Earth and by the first Mars settlers. In response, around 2020, every selected astronaut should consign to living out his or her life on the surface of Mars.

So why send humans to Mars in the first place?

There is common agreement that humans trump machines in many ways. They offer speed and efficiency to perform tasks. On-the-spot astronauts offer nimbleness and dexterity to go places that are challenging for robots to access. Then there are the innate smarts, ingenuity, and adaptability of a human to evaluate in real time a situation, then improvise to prevail over surprises.

Still, there is a softer side of placing humans on Mars. There are behavior, performance, and human factor unknowns. Living far from Earth in a remote and confined environment will surely induce physiological and psychological stresses. One oddity that is sure to haunt the first humans on Mars—loss of privacy.

You already get a sense of that when you tune in to televised linkups with International Space Station crews. Lots of cameras are positioned everywhere. Of course, the communications time lag between Earth and Mars is a factor. There’s a way to start simulating today how best to handle Earth-Mars communications time delays. The International Space Station could simulate and teach people on both ends how to deal with the person-to-person communications delay. What this might boil down to is that every interplanetary traveler has to be a procrastinator!