A manned flight to Mars will be the most ambitious space project of this generation, but exactly until the moment we land humans on the Red Planet. Such a bold step requires the strictest preparation. First, it is necessary to build suitable rockets and spacecraft that can deliver probes and people to the planet. And if we talk about the aerospace agency NASA, then its task before the actual flight to Mars is also the construction of an orbiting lunar station, which will serve as a staging post on the way to the rest of the solar system.
Following the successful launch of SpaceX's CRS-12 space mission to deliver new cargo and supplies to the ISS, NASA Acting Chief of Staff Robert Lightfoot Jr. In an interview with the Futurism portal, he spoke about the additional difficulties to cope with before going to Mars.
“If you look at our plans for a flight to Mars, the International Space Station is taking an active part in them. For example, it is there that we test our life support systems,”Lightfoot shared.
He also added that the Moon will be the next logical step in realizing the goals set by the agency.
And yet flying to Mars and being able to survive there are two separate but equally important aspects of the same mission.
“We will try to make sure that we are fully prepared for anything on a scientific mission or manned flight,” Lightfoot added.
Nobody wants to just fly to Mars, land there, yell “I did it!”, Get back into the spacecraft and head home. Space exploration is not just a symbolic pretext for this mission. We want to stay on Mars and establish a colony there. Of course, in some distant plans there is even an item on the terraforming of the Red Planet, but in the long term, the implementation of this idea may take more than one thousand years, if at all possible. Therefore, as Lightfoot says, human exploration of Mars will be small but very important steps. And perhaps the most important of these is providing access to a source of clean breathing air.
“The next rover, which will go to the Red Planet in 2020, will take part in an experiment in which we will try to extract oxygen from the atmosphere of Mars. The experiment and its results, of course, are related to our further plans for the development of this planet,”explained Lightfoot.
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We know that Mars' atmosphere is much thinner than Earth's and is 95.32 percent carbon dioxide. It also contains nitrogen (2.7 percent), argon (1.6 percent), about 0.13 percent oxygen, and a few other elements in smaller volumes. For comparison: in the Earth's atmosphere 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent is oxygen. Getting water on Mars shouldn't be a problem.
Is it possible to extract oxygen from the Martian atmosphere? NASA talked about this desire back in 2014, when it first spoke of a new rover for the 2020 mission. Most likely, this will require the delivery of microorganisms to the planet, perhaps bacteria or algae, which will use the Martian soil as "fuel". The resulting product may be able to be purified and made suitable not only for breathing, but also for use in the production of rocket fuel for return flights to Earth.
Now this may sound very futuristic, but laboratory experiments show that this is indeed possible. This is why shipping a rover in 2020 is a mission-critical mission for continued success. Among other tasks that will make life on Mars safe, there is also the creation of a magnetic shield (similar to that of the Earth) around the planet, the construction of a nuclear reactor, and, of course, growing potatoes, just like in the movie "The Martian".
Nikolay Khizhnyak
