New Technologies Could Allow Astronauts To Resupply While On Mars, During Deep Space Missions

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
In order to achieve its goals of conducting prolonged operations on Mars and sending astronauts on missions that would take them into deep space, NASA is investing in new technologies designed to help them find and use breathable air, drinkable water and other natural resources originating from places other than Earth.
“Safely sending human explorers to and from Mars will be the challenge of a generation,” the US space agency said in a statement Friday. “We don’t yet know what clues astronauts will uncover in the Martian soil or atmosphere that reveal new knowledge about our solar system, but one thing is certain, Mars contains critical resources that can sustain human presence.”
“Harvesting those resources will be key to pioneering the Red Planet,” it added. “To enable missions deeper into space than ever before, NASA is investing in technologies for In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) – the ability to find and use natural resources beyond Earth… In the short-term, ISRU is one of the key capabilities NASA needs to help astronauts rely less on supplies from Earth and become more self-reliant on expeditions far from home.”
In addition to the air and water that will be required by astronauts during long-term missions, the ISRU technology will look to allow them to grow food, and perhaps even let them create their own rocket fuel, 3D printed parts and structures by using minerals obtained by local sources. These resources will be essential, as it will take over six months to reach Mars, and the orbit of the planet requires them to stay less than 30 days, or stay for more than 500.
“The ability to leverage Mars resources could greatly reduce the cost of both mission types. NASA will soon test ISRU experiments that could help overcome this challenge,” NASA said, noting that some of the instruments that will be carried to the Red Planet onboard the Mars 2020 rover will look to address some of these resource-related issues.
One of those instruments is known as the Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment (MOXIE), and it will be used to collect carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere and convert it into oxygen. Once the MOXIE system is successfully demonstrated on Mars, the agency believes that it could be scaled as a way for astronauts to replenish their life support during future manned mission, and could even provide oxygen for fueling an ascent vehicle for departure.
“The ability to produce oxygen on Mars decreases the amount of cargo we will need to launch in advance of human missions or send with crews, which could significantly decrease the costs of those missions as well,” the organization explained. However, it also noted that the need to survive using localized natural resources is not limited to Mars.
To that end, NASA is developing a plan to launch the Resource Prospector with the Regolith and Environment Science and Oxygen and Lunar Volatile Extraction (RESOLVE) experiment. The Resource Prospector, the agency said, will land on the south pole of the moon and will carry RESOLVE on a rover. The goal will be to discover, characterize and map areas containing ice and other substances in primarily shadowed areas of the moon.
“The concept includes multiple science instruments that will help identify volatiles in the lunar soil (or ‘regolith’), such as hydrogen and water ice,” NASA explained. “An on-board oven will separate the natural resources from soil samples. In the future, water and oxygen extracted from lunar soil through methods tested by RESOLVE could be used for life support,” as well as the recently discovered methane and hydrogen found in lunar craters.
Furthermore, resource-rich asteroids could ultimately serve as waypoints for deep space journey. Within the next few years, scientists and astronomers plan to move a near-Earth asteroid into orbit around the moon in what is known as the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM). This asteroid will be explored starting in the 2020s, and one of the goals is to find opportunities to mine resources that could be turned into propellant, radiation shielding or other substances.
“NASA has initiated concept studies to examine how to harvest these resources from asteroids, in a weightless environment,” the agency noted. “With raw materials astronauts could build infrastructure like launch pads and radiation shielding that will further reduce dependence on Earth supplies and protect the crew. Perhaps the most profound moment, though, will come with the first breath of fresh air made on another planet.”
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FOR THE KINDLE: The History of 3D Printing: redOrbit Press
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