NASA's Mars Science Laboratory will help to open new human vistas. Image Credit/NASA
While the primary goal of NASA’s ambitious $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission is to assess the habitability of the Martian environment, U. S. space agency experts planning for the future human exploration of the Red Planet will be following the multi-year mission closely as well.
The MSL/Curiosity rover mission is scheduled for launching atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station,Fla., on Saturday between 10:02 a.m. and 11:45 a.m., EST.
The mission findings — the six-wheeled rover and its collection of nine science instruments and engineering sensors is scheduled to reach its Gale crater destination in August — will help scientists determine if the soil and thin atmosphere of Mars were suitable for some form of life. MSL’s findings will also help NASA’s Human Spaceflight Architecture Team determine the environmental risks to humans and potential resources available to explorers.
“The goal is to send humans to Mars and return them safely,” Doug Ming, an MSL co-investigator and the manager of NASA’s Human Exploration Science Office, told a pre-launch news briefing.
“In order to return them safely, we really need to now about the Mars environment and the surface properties on Mars” explained Ming. “The objective is to obtain knowledge of Mars sufficient to design and implement a human mission with acceptable cost, risk and performance.”
In 2010, President Obama directed NASA to aim for a human mission to an asteroid by 2025, as a stepping stone to the exploration of Mars in the mid-2030s. Earlier this year, the White House and Congress reached an agreement to develop the Space Launch System and the Orion/Multi-Purpose Crew Launch Vehicle, a heavy lift rocket and crew capsule to execute a flexible human exploration strategy leading to the Red Planet.
“The human exploration of Mars is a unique challenge,” said Bret Drake, the deputy chief of NASA’s Human Spaceflight Architecture Team. “It represents and opportunity for humans to actually break the bonds of Earth. It allows us a first chance to be a two planet species. But with it comes some significant challenges.”
Under current planning, a mission would span nearly 900 days, including a 500 day stay on the Martian surface and six months of travel each way. The fuel and life support requirements for such a long journey would require NASA and its partners to launch the hardware equivalent of two to three International Space Stations (the ISS weighs in at about 900,000 pounds).
The mass requirement could be reduced significantly if explorers could extract water, oxygen and methane from the Martian soil and air. The Martian soil might even suitable for growing some food.
Then there are the hazards to humans posed by solar and galactic radiation exposures. If the levels are as great during the transit and on the Martian surface as suspected, some of the mass requirement must be allocated to shielding.
Mars is also infamous as well for its global dust storms. The chemical and mineral composition of the dust could be toxic to humans; and depending on the structure of the granules, destructive to the machinery and sheltering explorers will want to send ahead and take with them.
MSL, which carries instruments supplied by Russian and Spanish as well as American scientists and engineers, will help NASA experts address all of those issues.