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NASA’s plan for the journey to Mars includes a series of mission phases leading to capacity for “Earth independent” space travel. (Image credit – NASA)
We know what goal we want to achieve – putting humans on Mars. What continues to be unclear is the detailed plan. How are we going to accomplish this bold and challenging goal? What are the requisite precursor missions, the technologies, sustaining systems, and habitation requirements and current capabilities?
The hearing, titled “Next Steps to Mars: Deep Space Habitat,” put five thought leaders in space exploration in the spotlight:
Committee members attempted to clarify NASA’s plans and explore some of the major issues and considerations which NASA will have to balance in orchestrating what is shaping up to be a multi-decade endeavor. In his testimony , Elbon described why the so-called journey to Mars presents technical and logistical challenges that far exceed any NASA has confronted in the past:
Our longest missions to date have been around a year. The mission to Mars will be at least three years long. The largest payload we’ve landed on Mars to date is just under a ton. To put humans on the surface of Mars, we’ll need to be able to land 20-30 tons. We’ve traveled to low Earth orbit and to the moon where communications delays are up to three seconds. On the journey to Mars, communications delays will be over 40 minutes. When Mars and the Earth are on opposite sides of the Sun, there will be a blackout for a period of two weeks. We must learn to operate in space without constant monitoring and control capability from the ground.
NASA’s plan for the journey to Mars includes a series of mission phases leading to capacity for “Earth independent” space travel. (Image credit – NASA)
As NASA continues phased development of the Space Launch System (SLS), its next-generation heavy launch rocket, and the Orion crew vehicle that will take humans to the “proving ground” within the Moon’s orbit and then beyond, agency leaders are also thinking ahead about capabilities NASA must develop to enable humans to reach Mars and return safely. Crusan’s testimony focused on two key capabilities: deep space, long duration habitation and in-space propulsion. “Validation of these and related capabilities in cislunar space will mark our readiness to begin Earth-independent exploration beyond the Earth-Moon system,” he said.
Chairman Babin noted that NASA’s work on deep space habitation capabilities is already underway, pointing out Congress provided NASA with $55 million in fiscal year 2016 for development of a “habitation augmentation module to maximize the potential of the SLS/Orion architecture in deep space … and a prototype module no later than 2018.”
Subcommittee Ranking Member Donna Edwards (D-MD) also highlighted the importance of habitation, listing some of the components that will need to be developed: “clean air, water recovery, climate monitoring and control, a means for food production…fire safety within a closed environment, crew exercise, onboard medical services, and the ability to provide safe haven from solar particle storms and cosmic galactic rays that pose risks to crew health and mission operations.”
Weir, who rocketed to fame after his book The Martian inspired a Hollywood blockbuster by the same name, asserted that NASA must also develop artificial gravity technologies before humans can travel to Mars:
The human body is simply not suited to living for long periods in zero-g. Until this issue is solved, we have no hope of landing on the surface of Mars, nor can we create permanent residences in space. … Instead of concentrating on ameliorating the effect of zero-g, we should concentrate on inventing artificial gravity.
For our next space station, we should have the crew compartment connected to a counterweight by a long cable and set the entire system rotating. This creates the centrifuge, which will generate constant outward force for the crew.
On the subject of how to effectively prototype and test needed capabilities in space, committee leadership and NASA witness Crusan diverged on whether the administration’s proposed mission to capture and redirect a moving asteroid is a necessary step on the journey to Mars.
Chairman of the full House Science Committee, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), bluntly criticized the Asteroid Retrieval Mission (ARM) and said the mission’s estimated total cost of $1.72 billion would be better spent on other space exploration pursuits.
The administration continues to push plans for an unjustified asteroid retrieval mission. The Asteroid Retrieval Mission is a distraction without any connection to a larger roadmap to explore our solar system and is without support from the scientific community or NASA’s own advisory committees.
SpaceNews reports that despite this hostility toward ARM and uncertainty about its future, NASA is moving ahead with a key review of the ARM in July. Soon thereafter it plans to solicit payloads and investigators for its robotic element.
When asked about the asteroid mission, Crusan defended NASA’s choice to prioritize ARM, calling it an essential part of getting to Mars:
The asteroid redirect mission gives us the in-space propulsion aspect that we’re looking for. To me, that’s the fundamental piece of the asteroid redirect mission, along with operating large-scale solar electric propulsion in deep space, because that will be the experience we’ll need to send cargo into Mars and eventually crew into Mars as well.
Despite congressional dissent on the necessity of ARM, there was widespread agreement in the hearing room on at least one thing. As Elbon put it in words echoed by at least two other witnesses:
We need to get on a path and stay on that path, and it has to survive several administrations [over] a couple of decades. …. We need to be careful not to be distracted by other ideas, not to invest in one path and then switch to another path. … As soon as we can, we need to nail down the architecture and the approach…, keep it funded, and that will allow us to get to Mars at a lower cost and a lower schedule….
NASA, the Obama Administration, and Congress have remained committed to the journey to Mars since 2010, and the effort is supported in the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 , the U.S. National Space Policy , and a 2014 National Academies report .
Already looking forward to mission accomplished in the 2030s, Elbon ended the hearing on a hopeful and sentimental note:
Somewhere in the world is a student - about 10 to 20 years old, probably studying math or science - and that student will be the first person to set foot on Mars. In my view that’s amazing to think about.