Sending astronauts to the red planet will be a decades-long activity and cost many billions of dollars. So why should NASA undertake such a bold mission?
A new report published Tuesday, titled “A Science Strategy for the Human Exploration of Mars,” represents the answer from leading scientists and engineers in the United States: finding whether life exists, or once did, beyond Earth.
“We’re searching for life on Mars,” said Dava Newman, a professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-chair of the committee that wrote the report, in an interview with Ars. “The answer to the question ‘are we alone‘ is always going to be ‘maybe,’ unless it becomes yes.”
The report, two years in the making and encompassing more than 200 pages, was published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Essentially, the committee co-chaired by Newman and Linda T. Elkins-Tanton, director of the University of California, Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory, was asked to identify the highest-priority science objectives for the first human missions to Mars.
‘No turning back’
Although coincidental, the report’s publication on Tuesday comes as NASA’s next administrator, private astronaut Jared Isaacman, is expected to be confirmed by the full US Senate in the next week or so. Isaacman is interested in laying the groundwork for future human missions to Mars as SpaceX and Blue Origin take steps toward building reusable in-space transportation systems that could send humans to Mars within the next two decades.
“There’s no turning back,” Newman said. “Everyone is inspired by this because it’s becoming real. We can get there. Decades ago, we didn’t have the technologies. This would have been a study report.”
The goal of the report is to help build a case for meaningful science to be done on Mars alongside human exploration. The report outlines 11 top-priority science objectives. In order of priority, they are:
- Search for Life: Is there evidence of life, past or present, on Mars?
- Water and carbon dioxide: Understand how water and carbon cycles changed over time
- Mars geology: Better understand the geological history of the planet
- Crew health: How do humans fare psychologically, cognitively, and physically in the Martian environment?
- Dust storms: Understand the origin and nature of large dust storms on the planet
- Search for resources: Develop in situ resource utilization, focusing initially on water and propellant
- Mars and genomes: Determine whether Mars changes reproduction and genome function in plant and animal species
- Understand microbes: Are microbial populations stable on Mars?
- Martian dust: How harmful and invasive is dust on humans and their hardware?
- Plants and animals: Does Mars affect plant and animal physiology and development across generations?
- Radiation sampling: Better understand the level and impact of radiation on the surface of Mars
The committee also looked at different types of campaigns to determine which would be most effective for completing the science objectives noted above. The campaign most likely to be successful, they found, was an initial human landing that lasts 30 days, followed by an uncrewed cargo delivery to facilitate a longer 300-day crewed mission on the surface of Mars. All of these missions would take place in a single exploration zone, about 100 km in diameter, that featured ancient lava flows and dust storms.
Science-driven exploration
Notably, the report also addresses the issue of planetary protection, a principle that aims to protect both celestial bodies (i.e., the surface of Mars) and visitors (i.e., astronauts) from biological contamination. This has been a thorny issue for human missions to Mars, as some scientists and environmentalists say humans should be barred from visiting a world that could contain extant life.
In recent years, NASA has been working with the International Committee on Space Research to design a plan in which human landings might occur in some areas of the planet, while other parts of Mars are left in “pristine” condition. The committee said this work should be prioritized to reach a resolution that will further the design of human missions to Mars.
“NASA should continue to collaborate on the evolution of planetary protection guidelines, with the goal of enabling human explorers to perform research in regions that could possibly support, or even harbor, life,” the report states.
If NASA is going to get serious about pressing policymakers and saying it is time to fund a human mission to Mars, the new report is important because it provides the justification for sending people—and not just robots—to the surface of Mars. It methodically goes through all the things that humans can and should do on Mars and lays out how NASA’s human spaceflight and science exploration programs can work together.
“The report says here are the top science priorities that can be accomplished by humans on the surface of Mars,” Elkins-Tanton said. “There are thousands of scientific measurements that could be taken, but we believe these are the highest priorities. We’ve been on Mars for 50 years. With humans there, we have a huge opportunity.”
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