Top U.S. scientists and engineers have released a 200-page report, “A Scientific Strategy for Human Exploration of Mars,” advocating investing resources to visit our most promising neighbor for human habitation. What is its core? They want to try to find life in another world. But beyond that, studying the geology of Mars, discovering new resources, and bringing samples home will be much easier once humans set foot on the ground.
For years, Mars has been a distant future project, only possible once new technologies are developed that have yet to be realized. But with further development of spacecraft such as SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon and New Glenn, Mars is getting closer, and manned missions to Mars are looking increasingly likely to be achieved in shorter time. With NASA’s new administrator expected to be sworn in soon, the United States can shift the focus of its efforts to reaching the Red Planet sooner rather than later.
“There’s no turning back,” said Dava Newman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT (via Ars Technica). “Everyone is inspired by this because it’s becoming a reality. We can make this happen. Decades ago, we didn’t have the technology. This could be a research paper.”
The report provides details on the benefits of sending human boots to Mars. While the search for life is the primary focus, the research also examines how water and carbon dioxide circulate on the surface and underground, how Mars’ geology has changed over thousands of years, how humans have survived in different gravity conditions, and how Earth’s microbes functioned on Mars, among other goals.
“The report calls this the number one science mission humans can accomplish on the surface of Mars,” said Linda T. Elkins-Tanton, one of the report’s authors. “Thousands of scientific measurements can be made, but we believe these are the most important. We have been on Mars for 50 years. With humans there, we have a huge opportunity.”
The report recommended that the initial 30-day mission should be prioritized, with subsequent cargo missions possible at a later stage for a 300-day mission.
This may all be an attempt to speed up U.S. astronauts’ journey to Mars, as there have been concerns that China might be the first to retrieve samples from the Red Planet — just as China might beat U.S. astronauts back to the moon if nothing is done about the SpaceX contract.
