Mission to Mars (21 page)

Other than our limited trips to the moon via Apollo, humans have never embarked upon a mission that’s on a par with marching off to Mars; the best analogs so far are Antarctic, undersea, and International Space Station expeditions, but these are distant cousins to the isolation, remoteness, and challenges that will be faced by courageous men and women stationed on Mars, many millions of miles from Earth.

Vehicles and habitations envisioned by NASA for a Mars post

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Illustration Credit 7.2
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A NASA Mars reference document emphasizes the need for more study of the composition of a Mars crew, based on personal and interpersonal characteristics “that promote smooth-functioning and productive groups, as well as on the skill mix that is needed to sustain complex operations.”

Establishing a footing on distant Mars
is
a complex operation. The challenge ahead is monumental and historic. We are on a pathway to homestead the red planet courtesy of robotic explorers that are surveying what now looks like unreal real estate. Nonetheless, there’s familiarity with remote Mars. It did not go unnoticed that the first color images transmitted from the Curiosity rover showed layered buttes and other features reminiscent of the southwestern United States.

There is an evolving comfort level with Mars. It is a perspective that beckons us to push forward.

I recently took part in a major gathering of Mars aficionados, the Workshop on Concepts and Approaches for Mars Exploration, held June 12–14, 2012, at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas. It was a heady affair, tackling major issues, including how best to respond to President Obama’s challenge of sending humans to orbit Mars in the 2030s.

Some 185 participants came together to share ideas, concepts, and capabilities and address critical challenge areas, focusing on a near-term time frame spanning 2018 through 2024, and a mid- to longer-term time frame spanning 2024 to the mid-2030s.

It was made clear up front that in today’s financial times, investment in Mars exploration is tough. The workshop had as a major goal the identification of new concepts and “retuning” ideas for Mars exploration in light of current harsh fiscal realities.

Looking forward into the next decades, all agreed that international collaboration held the greatest potential to enhance future Mars programs—operating in a one-for-all, all-for-one mode. In this light, for instance, any ambitious, complex, and costly Mars sample-return campaign—robotically grabbing and rocketing back to Earth specimens of the red planet—was eyed as dependent upon a long-term and enabling collaboration with other nations.

As always, front and center is the power of Mars to entice us to brood over some key, compelling questions, particularly if life ever was sparked into being there. If so, did it perish or is it still resident on the planet? But also understanding the Martian climate and atmosphere, including the evolution of Mars’s surface and interior, can be looped back into grasping the past, present, and future of Earth. The geologic record of early Mars has been preserved, chronicling the period more than 3.5 billion years ago when life is likely to have started on Earth—a time period whose record is mostly missing on our own planet. Can Mars exploration allow us to turn back the clock and see if life arose elsewhere in our solar system neighborhood?

That’s all good science, but we have more urgent reasons to study the environment of Mars: It is mandatory for assuring the safe landing and operation of future robotic and, more important, human missions to the planet. Obviously, unraveling the inner and outer workings of Mars will be a labor-intensive human activity.

There were several challenge areas addressed by workshop attendees, among them what kind of human health-risk reduction is required to support crewed missions around Mars, at Phobos or Deimos, or on the surface of the planet. There’s a need to take into account ionizing radiation and the toxicity of soils, among other items.

Analyses of interplanetary trajectories from the vicinity of Earth to the Mars system and return were identified, distinguishing those that offer efficiencies in transportation systems, including transit time, cost, et cetera. This includes looking at a variety of Mars orbits and possible rendezvous with or landing on Phobos or Deimos, and scrutinizing trajectories of Earth-moon L2 to the Mars system, and return.

Mars surface system capability is another challenge, whether lighter rover systems able to speed across the planet or equipment that demonstrates in situ resource utilization (ISRU). ISRU demos can shake out equipment to support human surface exploration
and settlement—projects for extraction and long-term storage of oxygen and/or hydrogen from available Martian resources in the atmosphere, hydrated minerals on the surface, and digging into Mars to utilize subsurface ice.

An artist’s sense of a “space hab” on Mars includes a greenhouse farming unit
.

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Illustration Credit 7.3
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Here’s an imperative. Incorporating ISRU into human exploration of Mars and its moons necessitates a shift in mind-set—
not
taking everything you need by launching it from Earth. You don’t have to haul everything with you because there are available resources at destination’s end. There are new ISRU products that can be tapped, such as methane, magnesium, perchlorates, and sulfur. ISRU systems are vital to extract “made on Mars” products from the Martian environment, such as water, oxygen, silicon, and metals for life support, rocket fuels, and even construction materials. Putting in place an effective ISRU system will lessen the need for resupply missions and fully support an off-Earth outpost.

One major realization from the workshop: There is synergy in enabling technologies between robotic and human missions and this increases as future robotic missions become more ambitious. This synergy can manifest itself in a couple of ways, as identified in the meeting:

Of key interest to me, several breakout paper observations produced at the workshop focused on the long-haul vision of preparing for human exploration.

Continual scientific study of Mars is an important prelude to enable targeted, cost-effective human exploration. There’s need to extensively characterize the surface and subsurface of Mars. Also, the polar regions of Mars are not only scientifically compelling, they merit study as resource-rich human destinations.

Phobos and Deimos were viewed by workshop participants as “important destinations that may provide much of the value of human surface exploration at reduced cost and risk.” It was reported that, as natural space stations and a potential “base camp,” these two moons can support teleoperation of payloads on Mars along with habitat buildup, while alleviating some planetary protection issues.

Thanks to robotic surrogates, surprises from Mars will keep coming. NASA’s Mars program provided the first close-up photo of the red planet in 1965. Our view of that world has been transformed by camera-snapping orbiters from high above, as well as by the groundbreaking Phoenix lander, a run of rovers—Sojourner, Spirit, and Opportunity—and now the far more capable Curiosity. They serve as vital precursors for human exploration of Mars—but there is far more work to do.

In striving for settlement of Mars, new technologies must be mastered. Agriculture under extreme conditions, power generation,
radiation protection, and advanced life-support systems are called for. Autonomous and highly robust equipment is necessary. To counter the typical 40-minute, round-trip speed-of-light communications time between humans on the surface of Mars and ground controllers on Earth, control must be in the hands of those on the red planet.

Arguably, one of the better looks at what an early Mars encampment might constitute can be derived from
Human Exploration of Mars Design Reference Architecture 5.0
, issued in 2009 by NASA’s Mars Architecture Steering Group. The document was edited by Bret Drake of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

NASA’s Mars design reference architecture details the systems and operations for a trio of human trips to explore the surface of Mars, carried out over roughly a decade. These first three missions, as the document explains, were designated because
the development time and cost to achieve the basic capability to carry out a single human Mars mission “are of a magnitude that a single mission, or even a pair of missions, is difficult to justify.”

Astronauts will use various rovers to expand our knowledge of Mars
.

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Illustration Credit 7.4
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These first three human Mars missions are also assumed to have been preceded by a series of test and demonstration missions on Earth, in the International Space Station, in Earth orbit, on the moon, and by robotic Mars missions “to achieve a level of confidence in the architecture such that the risk to the human crews is considered acceptable,” the report says.

While I differ with sections of this report, it does offer a look at the “need-to-haves” in terms of a starter kit for living on the red planet.

For example, once a crew lands they will need effective and reliable shelter to permit outside excursions. The crew can investigate the Martian surface in a wheeled exploration vehicle, say for weeks at a time, without returning to the habitat. Strolling Mars-walkers will need protection from radiation and dust to safely survey and work on the surface.

From an operational perspective, the first humans to set foot in a Mars landing zone and habitat locale would find themselves at a broad, relatively flat, centrally located area for safety’s sake. That means, however, crew and cargo may be far removed from features of scientific significance, beyond a practical walking range for a crew. Pressurized rovers could tote equipment, such as drilling gear to penetrate the Martian surface to moderate depths. The ability to move a drill from location to location would also be desirable. Samples would be returned to the primary habitat that’s equipped with a laboratory for extensive analysis.

Not all crew members would trek across the Martian landscape. There would always be some portion of the crew in residence at the habitat.

The NASA report observes that “a strong motivating factor for the exploration of Mars is the search for extraterrestrial life.” However, the document goes on to explain that this search could be permanently compromised if explorers carry Earth life and inadvertently contaminate the Martian environment. Additionally, there is need to guard against the remote possibilities that samples transferred from Mars could support living organisms that might reproduce on Earth and damage some aspect of our biosphere. Avoiding both of these eventualities is termed “planetary protection.”