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WASHINGTON – NASA’s Artemis human lunar exploration program may help pave the way for human missions to Mars, according to a new report, though some adjustments to those plans may be required.
The report, released by space exploration advocacy group Explore Mars during its Humans to Mars virtual summit, builds on a workshop held last November that brought together representatives from NASA, industry, and academia to explore approaches for the affordable human exploration of Mars.
The workshop identified 85 activities or functions associated with human exploration of Mars, ranging from human health to landing technologies and surface systems. A “significant” number of them may benefit from the Artemis program or ongoing research on the International Space Station, the report concluded.
That would be reinforced by work on specific technologies on Mars. “We should be looking at withdrawal risks, testing technologies, and living and working on the moon in parallel with the development of those unique and specific technologies,” said Lisa May, chief technologist for civil and commercial space at Lockheed Martin, during a panel discussion at the conference September 2.
One area of study the panelists noted is gaining experience in partial gravity, such as on the surface of the moon or Mars. “We don’t know what we don’t know about being in partial gravity,” said Michelle Rucker, lead architect for Mars at the Johnson Space Center. NASA’s experience, she noted, has been almost entirely in terrestrial gravity or microgravity. “A data point between zero and one would be good for us.”
However, the workshop said that some changes to the Artemis program may be needed to better serve the exploration of Mars. “Just having humans on the surface of the moon doing their work, doing their exploration and science, and building a sustained presence is not adequate,” May said.
An example of a change is having extended missions at the lunar gateway, which NASA is currently proposing to use for relatively short stays for astronauts. “We could emulate the missions to Mars, the duration of the Mars transit, making the crews stay longer at the Gateway,” he said.
Another working group at the workshop focused on in situ resource utilization, particularly accessing the water ice reservoirs that likely exist on both the moon and Mars. That includes a series of precursor missions on both worlds to determine how accessible that ice is.
“The next step is to stop being in orbit, go down to the ground, start digging the earth and understand what’s really on the surface,” said Brett Denevi, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
An example of such a mission is NASA’s Polar Volatile Research Rover (VIPER), which will search for water ice at the moon’s south pole. “VIPER is a critical first step,” he said, “but we have to continue from there.”
Clive Neal, a professor at the University of Notre Dame, agreed, emphasizing the importance of identifying reservoirs of water ice on the Moon and Mars that could be used by manned missions. “Understanding how much there is that we can actually extract and use is going to dictate the architecture of what we put together to go to the Moon and then to Mars,” he said. “It is essential to do that now.”
He said that’s important for long-term sustainable human exploration on both the Moon and Mars. “Developing sustainability on the moon gives us a blueprint for developing sustainability on Mars,” he said. That sustainability, he said, will prevent “another 50-year gap before we send humans beyond Earth orbit.”
