Mission to Mars (23 page)
Authors: Buzz Aldrin
Tags: #Engineering & Transportation, #Engineering, #Aerospace, #Astronautics & Space Flight, #Aeronautical Engineering, #Science & Mathematics, #Science & Math, #Astronomy & Space Science, #Aeronautics & Astronautics, #Astrophysics & Space Science, #Mars, #Technology
SpaceX is developing private Mars operations
.
Here an artist’s rendering depicts Dragon spacecraft on the planet
.
The reach for Mars need not be a governmental event.
One private-sector plan is being led by Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), a U.S. commercial space firm birthed in June 2002 by entrepreneur Elon Musk. He gained his fortunes, in part, from co-founding and then selling PayPal, the online money transfer and payment system.
In May 2012 SpaceX made history when its Dragon spacecraft flew atop the company’s Falcon 9 booster to become the first commercial vehicle to rendezvous with and then attach to the International Space Station. Dragon is a free-flying, reusable spacecraft under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program. This space agency initiative was put in place to spearhead the delivery of crew and cargo to the International
Space Station—but turning over these tasks to private companies. The SpaceX Dragon vehicle is made up of a pressurized capsule and unpressurized trunk used for transporting cargo and/or crew members to low Earth orbit.
A restless billionaire, SpaceX’s Musk is devoted to taking his Dragon creation to extreme space, breaking away from the confines of Earth. His target: Mars.
Under a proposed SpaceX concept, dubbed Red Dragon, the plan is to first send life-looking scientific devices to the red planet using his firm’s Falcon Heavy booster. That mission would be followed in later years by sending a human to Mars on a timetable far faster than NASA’s. Helping to flesh out technical details of the SpaceX Red Dragon enterprise is a tiger team at NASA’s Ames Research Center. They have been sketching out use of the SpaceX craft to search for past or present life on Mars and to sample reservoirs of water ice known to exist in the shallow subsurface of the red planet.
How this plan evolves over the next few years deserves watching. For the moment, Musk is passionate about the adventure and settlement of Mars. Ultimately, it is vital, he says, that humankind be on a path to becoming a multiplanet species. If that human trajectory is
not
pursued, he observes, “we’ll simply be hanging out on Earth until some calamity claims us.”
There are many ways to investigate Mars. A full array of robotic vehicles could be teleoperated by a crew orbiting the planet or
stationed on one of its two moons. These same devices might also be deployed and operated by landed crews to boost and expand their exploration presence on the planet.
Remotely piloted Mars gliders and balloons can take to the air. Ground-thumping penetrators, deep-drilling robots, and slithering android snakes could be let loose. Sensor-laden tumbleweed-like vehicles can roll across the planet like dandelions, propelled by Martian breezes to scout about the terrain of Mars using minimum power. Robot hoppers possibly will jump from one spot to another … and then another—imbued with a “nose for science,” say to use special devices able to sniff the Martian air for traces of biologically produced methane leaking from underground haunts of microbes.
Early on, specially equipped, sterilized automatons will be set to learn more about water on modern Mars. And where there’s water, there could be life.
Here is a sampling of inventive and equipment-carrying machines—built to scout out Mars in difficult terrain, hop across the planet from spot to spot, plow into its surface, and even take to the air:
• The
Axel Rover System
is a low-mass robot that can rappel off cliffs and trek agilely over steep landscape. It can look into canyons, gullies, fissures, and craters. Axel can operate both upside down and right side up and is built to scoop up material for later analysis. By using a tether, Axel unreels itself from an anchor point, say from a larger lander or rover, to perform daring descents where humans would find such traverses difficult or too dangerous.
• The
Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey of Mars (ARES)
robot aircraft is able to wing its way over Mars. Among its many sky-high duties: Search for possible biogenic gases and volcanic gases, measure the Martian atmosphere, and scout out sites for sample-return missions—even help identify spots to land habitats for a future Mars base.
• The
Tracing Habitability, Organics, and Resources (THOR)
project uses projectiles to search out below-surface water ice that may support underground microbial life. THOR aims to use a direct-hit approach to blast
out material from beneath the surface of Mars—material that will then be analyzed by an orbiting observer craft.
• Nuclear-powered “hoppers”
leap from one Martian site to another, examining each locale. An armada of these jumping Mars vehicles swiftly charts large stretches of the Martian surface in just a few years. Hauling science gear from point to point, each hopper sucks up the carbon dioxide–rich Martian atmosphere for use as propellant. On cue, stored heat from a radioisotope power source hits the propellant and shoots the hopper in an arcing path toward a new landing area.
Automated vehicles must be designed to investigate challenging features on Mars. A tethered rover might manage steep terrain
.
At NASA and elsewhere, sending future robotic missions to Mars remains a cash-strapped activity. However, two NASA spacecraft have been funded to depart Earth for Mars in 2013 and in 2016, respectively. One is an orbiter, the other a lander, and both will add to our reservoir of knowledge about the Mars of the past and how the planet fits into our future.
The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission is designed to survey the planet’s upper atmosphere, ionosphere, and interactions with the sun and solar wind. The goal of MAVEN is to unravel the role that loss of atmospheric gas to space played in changing the Martian climate through time. Where did the atmosphere—and the water—go? Basically, this orbiter is to probe how Mars turned hostile.
The ARES robot aircraft can test the chemistry of the Martian atmosphere
.
The THOR project plans to use projectiles to search Mars’s surface
.
In circling the red planet, MAVEN’s sensor suite will determine the loss of volatile compounds—such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and water—from the Mars atmosphere. That inquiry will give scientists a way to look back into the history of Mars’s atmosphere and climate, gauge its liquid water status, and disclose just how the planet appears to have become increasingly inhospitable for life.
Selected in August 2012, NASA’s InSight mission to Mars is scheduled for departure from Earth in 2016. InSight’s snappy name stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport—and that says it all. InSight will get to the “core” of the nature of the interior and structure of Mars.
Is the core of Mars solid, or liquid like Earth’s? Data collected will help scientists understand better how terrestrial planets form and evolve. Carrying sophisticated geophysical gear, InSight will delve beneath the surface of Mars, detecting the fingerprints of the processes of terrestrial planet formation, as well as measuring the planet’s “pulse” (seismology), “temperature” (heat flow probe), and “reflexes” (precision tracking).
Once on Mars, this craft will take the heartbeat and vital signs of the red planet for an entire Martian year, two Earth years.
Drilling underneath the red Martian topsoil, InSight makes use of a stake called the Tractor Mole, within which an internal hammer rises and falls, moving the stake down in the soil and dragging a tether along behind it. The German-built mole will descend up to 16 feet below the surface, where its temperature sensors will judge how much heat is coming from Mars’s interior, and that reveals the planet’s thermal history.
Proposed nuclear-powered hopper jumps between sites on Mars
.
The InSight lander is outfitted with a seismometer to take precise measurements of quakes and other internal activity on Mars. Radio signals sent between InSight and Earth will allow researchers to precisely gauge the wobble of Mars, a technique to judge the distribution of the red planet’s internal structures and better grasp how the planet is built.
My approach for homesteading Mars is via the Purdue/Aldrin Cycler. First of all, keep in mind two terms when considering this transportation system: There are cycler trajectories and cycler vehicles.
I have long admired and worked with James Longuski, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Purdue University. Along with his colleagues, we have forged ways to launch a substantially large vehicle that would provide radiation shielding and spacious quarters in order to guarantee the safety and comfort of outbound-to-Mars and inbound-to-Earth astronaut crews.