Planetary Protection for Manned Mars Exploration

Planetary protection for humans in space: Mars and the Moon

Low-latency teleoperations (LLT), or "telepresence" allows for the control of almost any asset in essentially real-time and has significant potential to address potential planetary protection concerns and to enhance astrobiology exploration activities on both robotic and human missions to Mars and elsewhere in the solar system. LLT can assist with the search for extraterrestrial life and help mitigate planetary protection concerns as required by the UN Outer Space Treaty. LLT can help by allowing for real-time exploration of areas that may otherwise not be conducive to direct human contact. Crew members can search for, acquire, and robotically manipulate samples in real-time and engage in precise measurements and experiments without requiring the crew to be present in dangerous or otherwise problematic conditions or environments. LLT operations can be particularly effective in studying "Special Regions" - areas of astrobiological interest that might be adversely affected by forward contamination from humans or spacecraft contaminants during activities on Mars. Similarly, LLT can aid in addressing concerns about backward contamination that could impact mission implementation for returning Martian samples and crew to Earth.

This report investigates various methods of reducing the cost in space transportation systems for human Mars missions. The reference mission for this task is a mission currently under study at NASA. called the Mars Design Reference Mission, characterized by In-Situ propellant production at Mars. This study mainly consists of comparative evaluations to the reference mission with a view to selecting strategies that would reduce the cost of the Mars program as a whole. One of the objectives is to understand the implications of certain Mars architectures, mission modes, vehicle configurations, and potentials for vehicle reusability. The evaluations start with year 2011-2014 conjunction missions which were characterized by their abort-to-the-surface mission abort philosophy. Variations within this mission architecture, as well as outside the set to other architectures (not predicated on an abort to surface philosophy) were evaluated. Specific emphasis has been placed on identifying and assessing overall mission risk. Impacts that Mars mission vehicles might place upon the Space Station, if it were to be used as an assembly or operations base, were also discussed. Because of the short duration of this study only on a few propulsion elements were addressed (nuclear thermal, cryogenic oxygen-hydrogen, cryogenic oxygen-methane, and aerocapture). Primary ground rules and assumptions were taken from NASA material used in Marshall Space Flight Center's own assessment done in 1997.

For most of the history of space exploration, human and robotic programs have been independent, and have responded to distinct requirements. The NASA Vision for Space Exploration calls for the return of humans to the Moon, and the eventual human exploration of Mars; the complexity of this range of missions will require an unprecedented use of automation and robotics in support of human crews. The challenges of human Mars missions, including roundtrip communications time delays of 6 to 40 minutes, interplanetary transit times of many months, and the need to manage lifecycle costs, will require the evolution of a new mission operations paradigm far less dependent on real-time monitoring and response by an Earthbound operations team. Robotic systems and automation will augment human capability, increase human safety by providing means to perform many tasks without requiring immediate human presence, and enable the transfer of traditional mission control tasks from the ground to crews. Developing and validating the new paradigm and its associated infrastructure may place requirements on operations design for nearer-term lunar missions. The authors, representing both the human and robotic mission operations communities, assess human lunar and Mars mission challenges, and consider how human-robot operations may be integrated to enable efficient joint operations, with the eventual emergence of a unified exploration operations culture.

Planetary Protection is an effort to prevent inadvertent biological or organic contamination in solar system exploration. That effort cannot be perfect in actual exploration missions, but the price of not attempting it can be seen in numerous actual contamination events on Earth (e.g., kudzu and starlings in the US, Australia-released rabbits) and the more fanciful, but possibly valid, works of fiction ( The War of the Worlds, The Andromeda Strain ). Extraterrestrial contamination spread by Earth missions is known as forward contamination, while backward, or back contamination refers to contamination brought to Earth. Both robotic and human missions may be affected by planetary protection practices, which strive to apply the most current science to those efforts, but it is clear that those same missions may discover new information (the hope of most missions) that could argue for new and potentially altered requirements on the next mission, or on the ongoing missions themselves.

Planetary protection issues and the future exploration of Mars

In an on-going effort to make human Mars missions more affordable and sustainable, NASA continues to investigate the innovative leveraging of technological advances in conjunction with the use of accessible Martian resources directly applicable to these missions. One of the resources with the broadest utility for human missions is water. Many past studies of human Mars missions assumed a complete lack of water derivable from local sources. However, recent advances in our understanding of the Martian environment provides growing evidence that Mars may be more “water rich” than previously suspected. This is based on data indicating that substantial quantities of water are mixed with surface regolith, bound in minerals located at or near the surface, and buried in large glacier-like forms. This paper describes an assessment of what could be done in a “water rich” human Mars mission scenario. A description of what is meant by “water rich” in this context is provided, including a quantification of the water that would be used by crews in this scenario. The different types of potential feedstock that could be used to generate these quantities of water are described, drawing on the most recently available assessments of data being returned from Mars. This paper specifically focuses on sources that appear to be buried quantities of water ice. (An assessment of other potential feedstock materials is documented in another paper.) Technologies and processes currently used in terrestrial Polar Regions are reviewed. One process with a long history of use on Earth and with potential application on Mars — the Rodriguez Well — is described and results of an analysis simulating the performance of such a well on Mars are presented. These results indicate that a Rodriguez Well capable of producing the quantities of water identified for a “water rich” human mission are within the capabilities assumed to be available on the Martian surface, as envisioned in other comparable Evolvable Mars Campaign assessments. The paper concludes by capturing additional findings and describing additional simulations and tests that should be conducted to better characterize the performance of the identified terrestrial technologies for accessing subsurface ice, as well as the Rodriguez Well, under Mars environmental conditions.

Planetary protection for human exploration of Mars

Human exploration and development of space is aimed at opening the space frontier by exploring, using, and enabling the development of space and expanding the human experience into the far reaches of space. This includes increasing human knowledge of nature’s processes using the space environment, exploring and settling the solar system, achieving routine space travel, and enriching life on Earth through people living and working in space. NASA’s Mars robotic explorations and the International Space Station provide extensive experience, research and technology (R&T), and infrastructure for other envisioned programs in support of human exploration and development of space. The missions to Moon by United States, Russia, China, India, and Japan have provided valuable data for the Moon. In addition, NASA has studied the development of a lunar habitat and human mission to Mars as possible future missions. These missions face common challenges of travel to these planets and for the survival of humans on the surface of the planets. With the human Mars mission being the first to such a distant planet, advanced technologies will be required to enable the mission and to provide cost effective and safer approaches. The R&T areas considered important for future human mission include advanced human support, renewable resources and utilization of planetary resources, space transportation, automation and robotics, space power, information processing and communications systems, sensors, and instruments.

Cryogenics and the human exploration of Mars

Public communication strategy for NASA’s planetary protection program: Expanding the dialogue

The following paper documents the results of a one‐year multi‐center NASA study on the prospect of sending humans to Jupiter’s moon, Callisto, using an all Nuclear Electric Propulsion (NEP) space transportation system architecture with magnetoplasmadynamic (MPD) thrusters. The fission reactor system utilizes high temperature uranium dioxide (UO2) in tungsten (W) metal matrix “cermet” fuel and electricity is generated using advanced dynamic Brayton power conversion technology. The mission timeframe assumes on‐going human Moon and Mars missions and existing space infrastructure to support launch of cargo and crewed spacecraft to Jupiter in 2041 and 2045, respectively.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created in 1958 to develop America's non-military space effort. But the early leaders of a self-consciously elite science and technology agency rarely saw Earth as a part of 'space' or solar system exploration. This is clear when examining NASA's relations with earthly applications in the late 1950s and 1960s and with fast-emergent environmentalism in the 1970s and 1980s. NASA consistently misread the importance of the most popular science-based political movement of the late twentieth century. NASA was advised from 1959 onwards that earthly concerns - and practical worldly benefits - were necessary to create broad and enduring support for space explorations. Despite this, NASA leaders consistently underestimated, ignored or spun-off Earth 'applications' in the formative period of America's civilian space programme. Power and prestige-focused human spaceflight, Moon and Mars missions, and human settlement of the solar system, became NASA's enduring 'human spaceflight culture'.

The Biologic Analog Science Associated with Lava Terrains (BASALT) project is a multi-year program dedicated to iteratively develop, implement, and evaluate concepts of operations (ConOps) and supporting capabilities intended to enable and enhance human scientific exploration of Mars. This pa-per describes the planning, execution, and initial results from the first field deployment, referred to as BASALT-1, which consisted of a series of 10 simulated extravehicular activities (EVAs) on volcanic flows in Idaho's Craters of the Moon (COTM) National Monument. The ConOps and capabilities deployed and tested during BASALT-1 were based on previous NASA trade studies and analog testing. Our primary research question was whether those ConOps and capabilities work acceptably when performing real (non-simulated) biological and geological scientific exploration under 4 different Mars-to-Earth communication conditions: 5 and 15 min one-way light time (OWLT) communication latencies and low (0.512 Mb/s uplink, 1.54 Mb/s downlink) and high (5.0 Mb/s uplink, 10.0 Mb/s downlink) bandwidth conditions representing the lower and higher limits of technical communication capabilities currently proposed for future human exploration missions. The synthesized results of BASALT-1 with respect to the ConOps and capabilities assessment were derived from a variety of sources, including EVA task timing data, network analytic data, and subjective ratings and comments regarding the scientific and operational acceptability of the ConOp and the extent to which specific capabilities were enabling and enhancing, and are presented here. BASALT-1 established preliminary findings that baseline ConOp, software systems, and communication protocols were scientifically and operationally acceptable with minor improvements desired by the "Mars" extravehicular (EV) and intravehicular (IV) crewmembers, but unacceptable with improvements required by the "Earth" Mission Support Center. These data will provide a basis for guiding and prioritizing capability development for future BASALT deployments and, ultimately, future human exploration missions.

Molecular biology methods and technologies have advanced substantially over the past decade. These new molecular methods should be incorporated among the standard tools of planetary protection (PP) and could be validated for incorporation by 2026. To address the feasibility of applying modern molecular techniques to such an application, NASA conducted a technology workshop with private industry partners, academics, and government agency stakeholders, along with NASA staff and contractors. The technical discussions and presentations of the Multi-Mission Metagenomics Technology Development Workshop focused on modernizing and supplementing the current PP assays. The goals of the workshop were to assess the state of metagenomics and other advanced molecular techniques in the context of providing a validated framework to supplement the bacterial endospore-based NASA Standard Assay and to identify knowledge and technology gaps. In particular, workshop participants were tasked with discussing metagenomics as a stand-alone technology to provide rapid and comprehensive analysis of total nucleic acids and viable microorganisms on spacecraft surfaces, thereby allowing for the development of tailored and cost-effective microbial reduction plans for each hardware item on a spacecraft. Workshop participants recommended metagenomics approaches as the only data source that can adequately feed into quantitative microbial risk assessment models for evaluating the risk of forward (exploring extraterrestrial planet) and back (Earth harmful biological) contamination. Participants were unanimous that a metagenomics workflow, in tandem with rapid targeted quantitative (digital) PCR, represents a revolutionary advance over existing methods for the assessment of microbial bioburden on spacecraft surfaces. The workshop highlighted low biomass sampling, reagent contamination, and inconsistent bioinformatics data analysis as key areas for technology development. Finally, it was concluded that implementing metagenomics as an additional workflow for addressing concerns of NASA's robotic mission will represent a dramatic improvement in technology advancement for PP and will benefit future missions where mission success is affected by backward and forward contamination.