From Earthlings to Martians: How Will Living On The Red Planet Affect Our Human Bodies?

As the next giant leap for humankind, the colonization of Mars receives a great deal of attention. When discussing the settlement of Mars, it is important to consider how the Martian environment will affect our human bodies in the long-term — a subject that does not receive as much coverage as colonization itself, yet is vital to ensuring our survival when we get there.

The Red Planet is the next natural step in humanity’s exploration of the cosmos – however living on the surface as humans adapted to life on Earth is medically challenging (Credit: NASA).

One-Way Ticket to Mars

The notion of leaving the cradle of humanity and settling in greener – or in this case redder – pastures on the fourth rock from the Sun has sparked novels, movies, research facilities, and now one-way missions. We have been conjecturing about life on Mars for centuries and recently, ‘Mars to Stay’ missions have been proposed by commercial entities in an attempt to bring these dreams to life and finally send humans on a trip to Mars with no return.  One such example is the non-profit foundation Mars One, whose goal is to establish a human settlement on Mars by 2025. It has stirred great interest with its optimistic roadmap of giving four volunteers a one-way ticket for a 210 day journey to the Red Planet every 26 months to spend the rest of their lives on Mars.

The Human Body and Gravity

Medically-speaking, getting there is essentially the easy part. The current six-month rotation on-board the International Space Station was partly designed so that it reflects the time taken to get to Mars, resulting in greater knowledge on what state an individual would arrive at Mars in. Physiological effects aboard the ISS range from muscle atrophy to osteoporosis and negative effects on the balance and cardiovascular system. With these mitigated for to some extent, such signs of the body adjusting to daily life without gravity are in synchrony with those likely to be experienced on a journey to Mars. As a result, the trip itself will not be so different to living on board the ISS — however the consequences of travelling beyond low Earth orbit and then living on Mars is far less familiar territory in space research. After a long space flight, astronauts find it difficult to stand and orientate themselves in the weight of Earth’s gravity.  A crew of post-mission specialists are ready to assist astronauts upon landing on Earth, but this will not be the case for the first settlers on Mars. The surface gravity of Mars is 38% that of Earth. That might make it slightly easier on landing, but in the long run, the full force of gravity that our bodies have adapted to will not be present to re-strengthen the astronauts’ cells, bones, and muscles as they readapt to a gravity environment. Adjusting to this lower level of gravitational pull on Mars may cause a physiological change in the astronauts’ bone density, muscle strength, and circulation making it impossible to survive under Earth conditions if they were to ever return.

Mars One aims to establish human settlement by 2025 displayed in this artist’s illustration of the Mars One habitat (Credit: Mars One/Bryan Versteeg).

Earthlings or Martians?

The side-effects of travelling to, landing, and living on Mars are far greater in terms of both psychology and physiology. Travelling outside of Earth’s protective magnetic field to a distance so great that our planet is no more than a speck on the horizon will have a profound effect on the crew.

Aboard the ISS, if astronauts are feeling down, family and friends are simply a phone call away. The astronauts are also able to change their perspective by basking in the beauty of the revolving planet beneath them. However, as Earth shrinks to merely a dot on the horizon and the crew begin to live and work on the surface on Mars, the time delay across the vast expanse of space increases and eventually phone calls with loved ones become impractical. With communication signals taking between 3 and 22 minutes to travel each way, the ability to sustain a real conversation with anybody on Earth is not an option ever again.

This may eventually change the way that the crew view themselves. Psychologically, it is speculated that they will become Martians within weeks and will view themselves as a separate entity from Earthlings. The psychological isolation experiment Mars-500 explored this and other side-effects of crew isolation during a year and a half simulation of a round-trip mission to Mars.

Romain Charles, who along with Diego Urbina and four other crew members spent 520-days in the Mars mission simulation, shared his thoughts on the defining moment when they felt separate from the outside world.

It’s a tough question as we didn’t have any windows (or a simulated window) in our modules. Diego created an animation which allowed us to have a better understanding of what we would be able to see (or not see) but it came a bit later…I would say that, it’s not really the view of the Earth that changed our perspective. For me, the moment when we couldn’t phone the control center brought more “distance” between our crew and the world around than any window.

Advancements in virtual reality technologies may aid the crew in maintaining their mental health and stimulate their sensory systems, providing the ability to virtually transcend to a familiar location on Earth that has fond memories associated with it.

This is the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS), located in the Utah Desert it is one of the four Mars-like bases scattered across the globe that gathers key research into life on Mars including fields such as biology and geology (Credit: The Mars Society).

The Environment of Mars

In order to assess the physiological effects of living on the surface of Mars, the Martian environment must be considered. Although it is orbiting 50% further away from the Sun and is 11% smaller than Earth, Mars is remarkably similar to our blue marble. With polar ice caps, seasonal changes, and weather patterns, it appears to be relatively comparable.

However, the absence of an ozone layer and liquid water are both extreme factors in the safety of astronauts. The presence of ‘superoxides’ that break down in the presence of ultraviolet radiation in Martian soil and a much lower level of thermal inertia on Mars also makes it difficult to predict how the human body will cope in such an environment. Martian dust devils, monster columns of spiraling red-brown sand and dust ten times larger than tornadoes found on Earth are predicted to also pose a threat to Martian settlers.

Currently exploring the surface of the Red Planet is NASA’s Curiosity rover. Its radiation-detecting instrument Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) collected data that suggests that the risk of radiation exposure on a 180-day each-way return trip to Mars with 500 days on the surface would expose astronauts to a cumulative radiation dose of about 1.01 sieverts. However, the long-term radiation dosage for those dwelling permanently on the red planet requires much further investigation.

Simulations of life on Mars in analogue Earth environments such as the Mars Analog Research Station (MARS) project established by the Mars Society help to reveal the mystery behind life on Mars. This is a global program of Mars exploration in four Mars base-like habitats located in the deserts of the Canadian Arctic, the Utah Desert, the Australian outback, and Iceland — allowing novel insights to be gained and field research to be conducted by rotating crews. Suchresearch in Mars-like environments is a valuable source of knowledge for researchers and inspiration for enthusiasts with the vision of human exploration of Mars.

The Martian habitat will undoubtedly need to protect the crew from long-term radiation exposure. Using Mars One proposes to solve this challenge via a habitat covered by a layer of soil that provides shielding against galactic cosmic rays. They state that sixteen feet (5 meters) of Martian soil provides the same protection as the Earth’s atmosphere — equivalent to 1,000 grams per square cm (227.6 ounces per square inch) of shielding. If the colonists spend two hours a day outside the habitat, their individual exposure adds up to 22 mSv per year. Key research into habitat and spacesuit technology is to be done in order to provide sufficient radiation shielding so that the settler is made safe when both indoors and outside on the surface of Mars.

Future Research

Eventually, humans will journey to Mars and settle on our neighboring planet; however this journey remains the greatest challenge of our time at present. In order to thrive on the Red Planet in the future, it is vital that thorough research into the Martian environment and its interaction with the complex human body is carried out now. In particular, long-term isolation studies that simulate not only the journey to Mars, as in the case of the Mars 500 experiment, but also daily life on the surface of Mars as a human settler are needed. Medical experiments investigating the environmental effects of the Martian environment such as prolonged radiation and reduced gravity should also be carried out.

Understanding these effects is critical to maintaining the health of those pioneering few that are bold enough to take the next step in humanity’s journey through the cosmos and it will ensure the survival of our species for many generations to come, as Earthlings and Martians.

Written by Nikita Marwaha for Space Safety Magazine

-Nikita

Getting to the Root of Debris Predictions with Terminal Velocity Aerospace

The Space Act Agreement provides for Arc-jet testing of thermal protection system materials at NASA Ames Research Center in which the conditions experienced by a vehicle during atmospheric reentry are approximately created (Credits: NASA)

On October 28, Terminal Velocity Aerospace (TVA) signed a Space Act Agreement with NASA Ames Research Center to collaborate on evaluation, testing, and technology transfer of newly-developed thermal protection system (TPS) materials.

“The Space Act Agreement mechanism offers a great way for companies to partner with NASA,” said Dominic DePasquale, the company’s CEO. “I’m excited that we have an opportunity to collaborate with the premier TPS technologists at NASA to transition this TPS material out of the laboratory for use in real missions that deliver value.”

This new development is a multi-year non reimbursable Space Act Agreement and presents both manufacturability and cost saving advantages for customers of TVA’s Reentry Devices (REDs), which collects data during the fiery conditions of spacecraft reentry.

“The chief benefit of the conformal thermal protection systems materials developed at NASA Ames is their manufacturability, especially for small reentry probes like TVA’s REDs. By employing the Ames TPS technology, TVA will be able to produce heat shields at lower cost, and those savings can be passed on to customers,” DePasquale said.

The basketball sized ReEntry Device (RED) joins the journey of a deorbiting vehicle as it relays data on the physics behind atmospheric breakup (Credits: TVA).

TVA began operations in 2012 and is dedicated to improving reentry safety and furthering the utilization of outer space. The company offers a family of small REDs for data collection and cost-effective small payload return through an ongoing relationship with The Aerospace Corporation, and a research and commercialization partnership with the Georgia Institute of Technology.

With the goal of advancing the understanding of reentry and breakup incidents, TVA is working towards addressing the present lack of high quality data on the subject. Atmospheric breakups are the best method for removing spacecraft from orbit. However, TVA reports that 10-40% of spacecraft mass survives reentry. Such debris usually has a high melting point and poses a danger to the public since the location of its landing is currently unidentifiable in advance.

The first device in this line of products, RED-Data, records data during the reentry of its host vehicle to provide a unique insight into the physics behind atmospheric breakup. DePasquale describes it thus:

Our RED-Data device provides a first-hand account of what occurs during reentry and breakup. The basketball-sized device rides aboard a host vehicle to collect pressure, temperature, acceleration, and other engineering data during the actual reentry event. This high fidelity reentry data is very useful for scientists and engineers for calibrating prediction models and designing for survivability or intentional demise.

The newly signed Space Act Agreement with NASA Ames provides for arc-jet and other ground testing of the new TPS materials at NASA Ames in preparation for flights on TVA’s REDs. With a line of RED-Data devices and Space Act Agreement with NASA Ames under its belt, the next step for TVA involves utilizing the TPS material developed at Ames in the next generation of RED devices, RED-Data2.

“TVA plans to implement the Ames TPS material for RED-Data2, and the entire family of TVA’s next generation RED devices that accomplish missions such as small payload return, reentry flight testing, and ’black box‘ safety recording for crewed space vehicles,” says DePasquale. “RED-Data2 is closer to the size of a softball as opposed to a basketball. It is also more than 50% lighter, autonomously initiated, and capable of passive in-space operations for several years as opposed to months. These characteristics of RED-Data2 allow for reentry data collection from an extended set of host vehicles including launch vehicle upper stages and small Earth orbiting spacecraft.”

These development brings humanity one step closer to gaining a fully comprehensive understanding and greater ability to predict the characteristics of uncontrolled spacecraft reentry and breakup incidences so that accurate safety precautions can be put into place in advance.

Image caption: The Space Act Agreement provides for Arc-jet testing of thermal protection system materials at NASA Ames Research Center in which the conditions experienced by a vehicle during atmospheric reentry are approximately created (Credits: NASA).

Written for Space Safety Magazine by Nikita Marwaha

Detecting Heartbeats : NASA Technology Used to Rescue Disaster Victims on Earth

A revolutionary radar device that can detect the heartbeats and breathing patterns of disaster victims trapped under rubble has been developed by NASA in conjunction with the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Aptly named Finding Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response (FINDER), the radar technology has the ability to locate individuals buried as deep as 9 meters and from a distance of 30 meters, according to NASA.

The FINDER team unveiled the technology on September 25 at a demonstration for members of the media at the DHS Virginia Task Force 1 Training Facility in Lorton, Virginia.

Time is of the essence in the civilian response world, in which there is a limited time following a traumatic event when a victim’s odds of survival are highest. This time, called the Golden Hour, can range anywhere from minutes to a few hours. When finding the victims in need of rescue is its own challenge, FINDER can help.

“The ultimate goal of FINDER is to help emergency responders efficiently rescue victims of disasters,” said John Price, program manager for the First Responders Group in Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate in Washington.

The device works by sending out a continuous, low powered microwave radar signal into the rubble, through which reflection patterns are analyzed and human life is detected.

FINDER utilizes the space technology used in remote sensing of the Earth and spacecraft detection in order to ensure that those trapped in rubble have the greatest chance of survival following a disaster.

“Detecting small motions from the victim’s heartbeat and breathing from a distance uses the same kind of signal processing as detecting the small changes in motion of spacecraft like Cassini as it orbits the Sun” said James Lux, task manager for FINDER at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

An outgrowth of NASA’s remote sensing technology, FINDER analyzes radar signals using advanced data processing algorithms developed by JPL. Within the chaotic, post-disaster environment this technology can distinguish the tiny signals from a person’s moving chest from the surrounding signals such as moving trees and animals nearby.

This technology has potential applications in NASA’s future human space flight missions, reducing the need for wires when monitoring astronauts’ vital signs.

Weighing less than 20 pounds, the device looks like a plastic briefcase and fits in the overhead compartment of aircraft.  Testing has been in progress for a year and its predicted commercial release is as soon as the spring of 2014.

Future developmental phases of FINDER will focus on a more specific locater function that can detect not only the existence of a victim but more precisely where in the rubble the person is located.

John Price, program manager from the DHS’ First Responders Group called FINDER “probably the greatest advance in the last 30 years.”

Watch video from the FINDER test, below:

Written for Space Safety Magazine by Nikita Marwaha