The best building blocks for sustainable living on Mars may be in the form of ice, NASA researchers say — as the agency marches toward reach...
The best building blocks for sustainable living on Mars may be in the form of ice, NASA researchers say — as the agency marches toward reaching the Red Planet by the 2030s.
A team of scientists and designers from NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, believe a conceptualized “Mars Ice Home” could be a “sound engineering solution” for living on the planet. Similar to an inner tube, the large inflatable shelter is surrounded by a shell of water ice, making it light enough to be transported and easily deployed with simple robotics.
The igloo-style home is then filled with water before astronauts arrive and use materials extracted directly from the planet. The “Mars Ice Home” could also potentially convert water into rocket fuel for the Mars Ascent Vehicle and double as a storage tank for the next arriving astronauts. The design has been selected as just one of many potential concepts for long-term living on Mars and a possible way to protect astronauts from long-term exposure to extreme temperatures and high-energy radiation, NASA announced Thursday.
“After a day dedicated to identifying needs, goals and constraints we rapidly assessed many crazy, out of the box ideas and finally converged on the current Ice Home design, which provides a sound engineering solution,” said Langley senior systems engineer Kevin Vipavetz, who led the design session.
The researchers say hydrogen-rich water would also provide an excellent shield for galactic cosmic rays, which is one of the most severe risks of long-term stays on Mars. The high-energy radiation can lead to an increase cancer risk or acute radiation sickness, NASA said.
Exposure to radiation is a significant hurdle to designing potential shelters on Mars. One possible solution explored by NASA involved habitats buried beneath the Martian surface, but that would require heavy robotic equipment transported from Earth – a significant drawback. The Ice Home, however, “balances the need to provide protection from radiation” by maximizing the thickness of the ice near the crew’s quarters to reduce exposure there while allowing light to pass through ice and other materials.
“All of the materials we’ve selected are translucent, so some outside daylight can pass through and make it feel like you’re in a home and not a cave,” said Langley researcher and Ice Home principal investigator Kevin Kempton, who told Space.com last month that the design is currently the “best solution” for early living on Mars.
Langley researcher Sheila Ann Thibeault said finding materials to fit that bill was a challenge for designers.
“The materials that make up the Ice Home will have to withstand many years of use in the harsh Martian environment, including ultraviolet radiation, charged-particle radiation, possibly some atomic oxygen, perchlorates, as well as dust storms – although not as fierce as in the movie ‘The Martian,'” Thibeault said.
Another hurdle for researchers was determining the amount of water that could be reasonably extracted from Mars. NASA says experts believe it’s possible to fill the habitat at a rate of one cubic meter per day, allowing the Ice Home to be completely filled in 400 days – or sooner if water can be extracted at higher rates.
Researchers also have to consider a large amount of flexible workspace so crews could fix robotic equipment indoors and without the restraint of pressurized suits. So to regulate temperatures inside the Ice Home design, a layer of carbon dioxide gas – readily available on Mars – would be used as insulation between the living space and thick layer of ice.
In October, President Obama announced that America’s “next chapter” in space would be sending humans to Mars by the 2030s with the ultimate goal of remain there for an extended period of time.
-via The New York Post
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