MISSION TO MARS

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LIFE ON MARSIs a manned mission to the red planet a horizon too far, or can international collaboration overcome the technical and financial hurdles between us and our nearest neighbour?

DAN THISDELL LONDON

 F or as long as there have been telescopes, there has been fascination with Mars and its tantalising similarities to Earth. Although it has been a very long time since anyone seriously believed in Mar-

tians or feared an HG Wells-style war of worlds, the or-biters and landers that have probed the red planet since the 1960s have left open the most fascinating question of all: is there – or if not was there ever – life on Mars?

As enticing as answering that question might be, how-ever, it has been more than 40 years since the last Apollo mission to the relatively close Moon. NASA’s follow-up George W Bush-era Constellation programme was ulti-mately axed by the succeeding Obama administration – largely because it was deemed unaffordable. Constella-tion had the goal of returning to the Moon by 2020. So, it would seem reasonable to surmise that sending astronauts to Mars is not on the proverbial radar. ❯❯

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❯❯ However, as NASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan recently explained to a full house at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London , there are reasons to believe that human ex-plorers could resolve our questions about Mars the way robots never could – and there is indeed a plan to send them there in 2035.

COMMON VISIONMoreover, says Stofan, this global exploration roadmap is not just a NASA scheme. All the world’s spacefaring nations together have built this common vision of why humans should visit Mars – and what preparatory work needs to be done to get them there and back safely.

Whatever co-ordination may be needed – and however much money – Stofan stresses that above all, international collaboration is the key to such an ambitious endeavour. No-body – not even NASA – can do it alone.

Indeed, she says, the roadmap is about “try-ing to do something very bold over a long time”, so there is a “huge challenge” to get from piecemeal budgets to a long-term, sus-tained plan.

But at least, under a common plan, the world’s space agencies can work indepen-dently or together to fill in some remaining gaps in our understanding of the science and technology needed for a human Mars mis-sion. Also, fortunately, the broad scientific programme guiding NASA and its peers aligns with the needs and objectives of reach-ing Mars. Headline goals include better un-derstanding the effects of operating in zero-g environments. For example, Stofan notes, some viruses appear to be more virulent with-out gravity.

Getting to Mars also benefits from and con-tributes to our efforts to better understand our own planet and the solar system.

That is, Stofan says, a “huge breadth of sci-ence” – and her job is to connect it all. Connecting it all to Mars are the common fac-tors scientists believe are needed to sustain life. Two of these – organic (containing carbon) chemicals and energy (from sunlight, geologic activity or gravitational forces) are commonplace.

The third, liquid water, is “the hard part”. Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s satel-lite Europa have both energy and possibly or-ganics, so they are candidates for life and even targets for future robotic missions.

ON THE Apollo Moon missions,

astronauts ventured about

400,000km from Earth and

spent 8-12 days away from

home.

A trip to Mars would involve

56 million km travelling over

eight or nine months – and a

stay of about two years, to

wait for the two planets to be

close enough again to make

the return journey over that

shortest distance.

So, while the hardware chal-

lenge of making the return trip

and surface stay is clearly

daunting, the obstacles to suc-

cessfully keeping a crew

healthy are equally high.

As NASA chief scientist

Ellen Stofan recently told a

Royal Aeronautical Society

audience, the International

Space Station is a crucial labo-

ratory. Weightlessness, she

notes, has profound effects on

the human body, which are not

yet well understood. Obvious

effects of weightlessness

SPACE MEDICINE

DIET, EXERCISE FOR A HEALTHY LIFE IN DEEP SPACE

Cycling is good exercise – so put your heart into it, Luca

“We are not sendingastronauts to Mars. We’re sending scientists to Mars”ELLEN STOFAN NASA chief scientist

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MISSION TO MARS

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include bone and muscle wast-

age – and these effects appear

to be amplified by exposure to

radiation, she says.

Also, according to NASA sci-

entist James Thomas, who car-

ried out a study of 12

astronauts for the US National

Space Biomedical Research

Institute, the heart becomes

more spherical when exposed

to long periods of microgravity

in space – a change that could

lead to cardiac problems. Part

of the problem, says Thomas,

is that “the heart doesn't work

as hard in space, which can

cause a loss of muscle mass”.

“That can have serious con-

sequences after the return to

Earth,” he says. “So knowing

the amount and type of

exercise astronauts need to

perform to keep the heart

healthy is going to be very im-

portant to guarantee their safe-

ty on a long flight like a mission

to Mars.”

A probably less life-threaten-

ing issue – though potentially a

big problem on a very long

space mission – came to light

in 2012, when it became

evident that about 20% of men

who make long-duration space

flights of six months or more

suffer permanent eyesight

degradation. That is, after re-

turning to Earth they are short-

sighted and may need to wear

glasses or undergo corrective

laser surgery.

The theory being considered

is that in microgravity, blood

and fluid pressure in the legs is

necessarily lower than on the

ground, and that pressure is

distributed elsewhere.

Discussing the problem during

another Royal Aeronautical

Society presentation in 2013,

UK astronaut Tim Peake noted

that astronauts on the ISS tend

to have puffy faces, and it may

be the case that pressure on

the retinas flattens them, in

some cases permanently.

Women are not affected, it

appears.

Peake speculated that

genetic screening might be-

come a necessary part of

astronaut selection.

Nutrition is another big ques-

tion, even without considering

the problems of providing food

for a crew without resupply

from Earth. Without normal

gravity, says Stofan, astronauts

experience an uncomfortable if

not debilitating rise in intracra-

nial pressure. It looks like the

answer is to not eat too much,

take very little salt and con-

sume lots of fruit and vegeta-

bles. “It’s the same

prescription” as for healthy liv-

ing on Earth, she says. ■

However, Mars is the most promising – data from seven landings, Stofan says, has led scientists to believe Mars at some point in its history had “sustaining conditions” for life.

So, for the scientific community the prime focus is to put a human on the surface to do the science that will, hopefully, tell us wheth-er Mars ever actually did sustain life – or even harbours some today. While orbital observa-tion and robotic exploration of the surface – ranging from NASA’s Viking missions in the 1970s to the Curiosity rover operating in Mars’ Gale crater since summer 2012 – have revealed a great deal about the planet, Stofan believes direct human interaction is “the only way we’re going to move forward”.

ROBOTIC LIMITATIONSStofan is as delighted as any scientist by the available data. That said, she is also a geolo-gist by training and hence intimately familiar with the scientific value of putting expert eyes – and hands – on the terrain. To that end, she is keenly aware of the limitations of robotic equipment.

NASA’s Pathfinder mission covered a few metres a day. The Spirit and Opportunity rov-ers went further, but even Curiosity – a car-sized machine – can only manage about 1km a day. A human scientist could travel much farther. Plus, Stofan adds, the analysis equip-ment carried by these rovers – however so-phisticated – is “woefully” short of what is really needed to analyse Martian rocks and dust. NASA still hopes that Curiosity will find organic molecules on the surface, but the reality is that the sensitive mass spectrome-ters needed for the job are huge, and any rov-er-borne machines we can send to Mars are a compromise.

Bringing samples back home would be bet-ter, but that would be a very expensive mis-sion. So, says Stofan, what is needed is to send scientists – and a laboratory – to Mars. And, she emphasises: “We’re not sending as-tronauts to Mars. We’re sending scientists to Mars.” Finally, there is another reason why the plan – at least from an American perspec-tive – has got to be aimed at sending human missions, not just robots. The simple Ameri-can political reality, she says, is that human spaceflight enjoys popular support.

STEPWISE PLANWhile spacecraft currently orbiting Mars, on the surface, on the way or in the works (see P24) are gathering data on the huge technical challenge of entry-landing-descent in Mars’ thin atmosphere, and on the radiation condi-tions there, a lot of science still needs to hap-pen in what Stofan calls a “stepwise” plan for reaching Mars.

Currently we are still in what she calls the “Earth-reliant” stage. Here, the International NASA’s SLS will be the largest rocket ever built

Orion’s 5m-diametre heat shield is the

world’s largest

Weightlessnesshas profoundeffects on the body, which are notyet understood

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ATTEMPTS TO reach Mars date

to the 1960s, but the Red

planet is a notoriously hazard-

ous destination for spacecraft.

Several early US and Soviet

attempts failed before NASA’s

Mariner 4 achieved a fly-by in

1965. The first orbits followed

in the early 1970s – the USA’s

Mariner 9, and Mars 2 and 3

from the USSR. NASA’s 1975

Viking landers were the first

truly successful spacecraft to

reach the surface.

After a hiatus during the

1980s and early 1990s, Mars

is today a very busy place.

Currently active are NASA’s

Curiosity (arrived 2012, pic-

tured below) and Opportunity

(2004) rovers. In orbit are

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance

Orbiter (arrived 2006) and

Mars Odyssey (2001), and the

European Space Agency’s

Mars Express (2003). All three

are mapping the surface and

supporting the active rovers.

SCHEDULED ARRIVALSOn the way to Mars and sched-

uled to arrive in September

2014 are NASA’s Mars

Atmosphere and Volatile

Evolution orbiter and India’s

Mars Orbiter Mission – known

as Mangalyaan (see P28). If

India succeeds, it will join the

USA, Soviet Union and Europe

in having made it to our nearest

planetary neighbour.

In the works are three mis-

sions being readied for the

next launch windows in 2016

and 2018, when Earth and

Mars will be at their nearest.

ESA’s ExoMars is a two-part

mission to send an orbiter and

lander in 2016 and a robotic

rover in 2018. Both missions

are designed to search for evi-

dence of life; the rover is

equipped with a drill capable of

reaching 2m below the sur-

face, where soil should be pro-

tected from the sterilising

effects of cosmic radiation. By

stepping in with the launches

and some scientific payloads,

Russia’s Roscosmos space

agency saved the missions

after NASA budget cuts forced

it to withdraw.

Also scheduled for 2016 is

NASA’s InSight (Interior explo-

ration using Seismic investiga-

tions, geodesy and heat

transport). The plan is to put a

lander on the surface,

equipped with a “mole” able to

push geologic instruments 5m

below the surface. ■

EXPLORATION AGENDA

MARS MISSIONS – ACTIVE AND PLANNED

Space Station is a laboratory for under-standing the effect on the human body of liv-ing and working in space. Microgravity raises medical problems with vision and circula-tion, muscle and bone wastage, among other issues (see P22).

Radiation is also a big problem in space travel. Exposure exacerbates bone density loss and can cause cancer and cognitive is-sues, so another critical step will be learning how to shield against radiation. Metal does not work, as solar energy energises it, and while water looks like the best answer, the en-gineering challenge is significant.

PROVING GROUNDIn all, says Stofan, “there is a huge amount of scientific work to do to be ready to move be-yond this Earth-reliant phase”.

Subsequently, starting in the early 2020s – when NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and the NASA-European Space Agency Orion crew vehicle is flying (see P25) – comes what Stofan calls the “proving ground phase”.

This period sees operations in the space be-tween Earth and the Moon’s orbit, to test our ability to live and work beyond Earth reli-ance, while still having the “safety valve” of being able to come back in a day or two – not the eight or nine months it would take to reach or return from Mars.

Finally, in the period preceding a 2035 mission, would be the “Mars-ready phase”. Here, says Stofan, we will need to understand practical problems like managing surface dust picked up by boots and space suits, which caused a lot of problems for Apollo astronauts and their equipment.

Also critically, the teams need to under-stand entry, descent and landing – getting hu-mans to the Martian surface will take a vehi-cle 10-50 times the mass of Curiosity.

Apart from sustaining an international ef-fort focused on Mars will be the challenge of linking three categories of programmes that

Space suits will need a redesign for Mars

NASA’s Curiosity rover landed on the red planet in 2012, and took this ‘selfie’

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THE DEVELOPMENT of a

key component in any fu-

ture manned mission to

deep space has taken a

leap forward, after the

European Space Agency’s

approval of the design for

the service module it will

supply for NASA’s Orion

crew capsule.

Orion – formally the

Multipurpose Crew Vehicle

– is being readied to take

astronauts to beyond low-

Earth orbit from the early

2020s. The Lockheed

Martin-built spacecraft will

rely on the ESA module for

propulsion, power supply

and life support for mis-

sions to the Moon and as-

teroids – or even Mars from

around 2035, if current

NASA planning holds.

Airbus Defence & Space

is adapting its Automated

Transfer Vehicle robotic

supply ship for the project.

As with the ATV, provision of

the Orion service module is

a large chunk of ESA’s con-

tribution to the international

barter arrangements that

make up the International

Space Station’s running

costs. The fifth and final

ATV mission to the ISS will

launch via Ariane 5 rocket

from Europe’s French

Guiana spaceport in July.

Orion and its service

module are scheduled for

an unmanned maiden flight

in 2017 to one of the

Lagrange points – a posi-

tion in orbit where the Earth

and Moon’s gravity balance

out, allowing a spacecraft

to hold station easily. A sec-

ond, manned flight could

follow in 2021 or 2022.

The ATV-Orion project

marks ESA’s first significant

foray into hardware for

manned missions.

However, much depends on

the readiness of Orion’s

rocket – NASA’s massive

Space Launch System.

With its initial version in-

tended to lift 70t to low-

Earth orbit and later

versions to heft 130t, the

rocket will be the most pow-

erful ever built. NASA says

it expects core stage test-

ing to begin in late 2016.

But SLS has been a light-

ning rod for controversy in

Washington. Conceived

after the Obama adminis-

tration axed the George W

Bush-era Constellation

Moon programme and its

Ares launchers, SLS has

been likened to the worst

pork-barrel spending with

the epithet, “rocket to no-

where”.

Critics have taken aim at

its cost – possibly $500

million per launch – and its

reliance on derivatives of

Space Shuttle motors.

SpaceX, whose relatively

low cost Falcon 9 rockets

have already shaken up the

launch market, has stated

its intention of developing a

Mars-capable rocket, but

any prospective NASA back-

ing would likely be con-

sumed by SLS. ■

CREW TRANSPORTATION

TRANSATLANTIC DEVELOPMENT EFFORT ADVANCES ORION CREW CAPSULE

have traditionally been managed separately in NASA: human exploration, science and tech-nology development. One example is the pro-posed asteroid redirect mission, which aims to bring an asteroid to the space between Earth and the Moon. There it would stay for hundreds of years, accessible for humans to work, test techniques and retrieve samples.

The science part is to identify a target. The technology part is to work out how to redirect it – robotic capture and ion propulsion are being looked at. Then, the human exploration element would see astronauts working on and around an asteroid the way they would work on Mars, but – as per the proving-ground plan – doing it near enough to Earth to be able to get home if needed.

The first steps are imminent. In 2021, the first crewed flight is planned of the vehicle that would carry astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit and ultimately, with the addition of a habitation module, to Mars. NASA’s Space Launch System rocket – the biggest ever built – will carry astronauts around the Moon, for the first time since 1972, in the Orion multi-purpose crew vehicle.

Lockheed Martin is developing the crew capsule, while Airbus Defence & Space is to deliver the attached service module – based on its Automated Transfer Vehicle robotic re-

supply ship, which has been key to keeping the ISS supplied. On the eve of last month’s Berlin air show the European Space Agency approved the design, so Airbus is confident it will pass the critical design review by the end of 2015, in anticipation of delivering the first example to Lockheed Martin in time for a 2017 uncrewed test flight (see below).

The asteroid redirect manoeuvre is tenta-tively planned for 2023.

From an engineering perspective, says Sto-fan, the two “tentpoles” that need erecting to reach Mars are radiation protection and entry-

descent-landing. Neither is straightforward, but she believes the goal of 2035 is realistic. “I think this is an achievable goal, to have something on the surface in this timeframe,” she says.

NASA chief Charles Bolden said as much one week later at the Berlin air show. Partici-pating in a panel discussion on international co-operation (see P26) with Jean-Jacques Dor-dain and Johann-Dietrich Wörner, his ESA and German aerospace agency (DLR) counter-parts, and Evert Dudok, who heads the com-munications, intelligence and security busi-ness at Airbus Defence & Space, Bolden made the point that NASA’s decision to bring ESA into the Orion programme was the first time his agency has ever brought a foreign partner on to “the critical path” for a major piece of hardware. That ESA alliance, he says, is col-laboration “with intent”. And, added Bolden: “We are as close [to Mars] today as we have ever been.”

Whether being closer than ever is very close at all remains an open question, howev-er. Stofan’s conviction that the engineering challenges can be overcome is infectious and,

The Lockheed Martin-built crew capsule will rely on an ESA-supplied service module

Microgravity raises medicalproblems with vision and circulation, muscle and bone wastage, among other issues

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as the ISS experience shows, internation-al collaboration can be made to work – even to the detailed extent of dividing tasks be-tween agencies and, increasingly, private con-tractors. But the very terrestrial matter of money is another issue.

Barack Obama moved into the White House in 2009 with an economy in crisis, so it is hardly surprising that heavy spending on long-term but hardly essential plans like Moon missions came under scrutiny. Indeed, one feature of his first year in office was the so-called Augustine Commission review of human spaceflight programmes, and among its conclusions was that Constellation was so far behind schedule and over budget as to be essentially unachievable.

SPACE POLICYObama axed the programme in early 2010, be-fore setting out a new space policy. Out were Constellation’s Ares launch vehicles and Moon lander. In was the Orion crew vehicle, what has become the SLS heavy rocket, a 2020s asteroid mission and a mid-2030s hu-mans-to-Mars mission.

A generous reading of this shift in priorities is that by doing away with the interim step of returning astronauts to the Moon, it sets out a more affordable path to the widely held long-term objective of Mars. A more sanguine read-ing might be that it keeps some US space in-dustry workers in jobs to build Orion and SLS – while maintaining funding for the ISS, which provides a stage for the politically im-portant theatre of US astronauts waving the flag in space. Other, more expensive aspects of the plan were punted into the next decade, when they can be realised – or not – as budg-ets allow.

Budgets, of course, are a huge sticking point. Whatever a Mars mission would actu-ally cost – and when pressed to speculate fol-lowing her Royal Aeronautical Society pres-entation, Stofan declined – it is hard to see where the money would actually come from. As of its 15th anniversary in late 2013, the ISS had consumed $150 billion of US, European, Russian, Canadian and Japanese money, so the cost of reaching Mars – notwithstanding the value realised so far from ISS investments – must reasonably be in the hundreds of bil-lions of dollars.

NASA’s total annual budget is some $17 billion, and it has non-Mars, non-human spaceflight priorities ranging from Earth ob-servation to aeronautics. NASA’s partner agencies are less well funded.

Where hundreds of billions are going to come from is as mysterious as life on Mars it-self. Stofan, however, does not see money as the huge stumbling block it would appear to be – because just as the plan for getting to Mars comes in phases, so does the spending.

From now until the early 2020s, what might be called the ISS spending phase predomi-nates. But, she says, after the ISS is finished that money will be freed up.

Ultimately, she adds, as things stand today “we’re in a better position than we were at the time of Apollo”. When President Kennedy set America on the course to reach the Moon by the end of the decade, NASA had barely eight years – and spaceflight technology was in its infancy. Today, she says, we have the “luxu-ry” of far more time, and lots experience in low-Earth orbit. Since we are “already on the path”, she says, we can talk about reaching Mars “without a herculean budget” because – unlike during Apollo – we do not have to in-vent everything we need. ■

NASA administrator Charles

Bolden has taken a swipe at

critics who think the USA has

lost the drive to explore space,

declaring that the country is

determined to return to the

Moon – and carry on to Mars.

Speaking on 20 May at an

ILA Berlin air show panel dis-

cussion on international space

co-operation, alongside his

European Space Agency and

Germany aeronautics agency

(DLR) peers Jean-Jacques

Dordain and Johann-Dietrich

Wörner, and Evert Dudok, head

of Airbus Defence & Space’s

communication, intelligence

and security segment, Bolden

said: “Everybody seems to

think America has given up on

the Moon. Not so.”

The Moon, he added, will be

a “proving ground” for tech-

nologies and skills needed to

send a human crew to Mars.

All four underscored their

firm belief that no such mis-

sion could be achieved – finan-

cially or technically – without

wide international collabora-

tion. Speaking from an indus-

trial perspective, but reflecting

the space agency directors’

views, Dudok says: “Global

challenges cannot be met by

national budgets.” Bolden

stresses that continued work

on the International Space

Station remains critical to the

long-term objective of reaching

Mars, which he sees as impor-

tant for all humanity.

Wörner took up that theme

with an implied reference to

the current tension between

the USA and Russia over

Ukraine. Noting that co-opera-

tion in spaceflight has often

overcome “special political

circumstances”, Wörner says

he hopes future collaboration

can be even more successful

than the ground-breaking

1975 Apollo-Soyuz docking.

All four agreed an ambitious

mission to Mars would need a

leader, and saw Bolden as the

chief candidate, if only be-

cause NASA has the biggest

budget. But while he says if

needed he would take on that

role as “captain”, he called his

“close friend” Dordain, head of

the 20-nation ESA and set for

retirement at year-end, the

“dean” - for “teaching us all

how to deal with international

partners.”

And, as if to underscore the

power of international co-oper-

ation to forge alliances, Bolden

and Dordain ended the discus-

sion with a big hug.

COLLABORATION

INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS PROMISE THE MOON

Putting the International into the Space Station

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If Mars is too far, train in Utah

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