Antarctic Becomes Testing Ground for Future Manned Voyage to Mars
The U.S. mission to Mars is starting in Antarctica. Researchers from NASA and the National Science Foundation are using the icebound continent as a model for Mars in an effort called the Antarctic Space Analog Program.
The program uses the frigid, unforgiving conditions of Antarctica to test technology and techniques that someday may lead the way to Earth’s planetary neighbor.
Expected spinoffs, such as new ways to grow fresh vegetables, innovative heating and waste-recycling equipment and a new generation of robots, would also help earthbound scientists who do Antarctic research.
“There are a lot of similarities between Antarctica and Mars,” said Carol A. Roberts, the Science Foundation’s deputy director of polar programs. “Both places are devoid of natural resources and suffer long periods of darkness. People wintering over at the South Pole endure some of the same sort of psychological problems as they would on a long space voyage or at a moon base.”
To many who visit them, the unglaciated areas east of McMurdo Sound known as the dry valleys suggest Mars landscapes as they might have appeared just before water vanished from the planet millions of years ago. Scattered among Antarctica’s barren valleys, a few permanently frozen lakes sparkle jewel-like amid spectacular layered mountains.
“The place gives you an alien feeling, an unworldly kind of experience,” said Chris McKay, an Antarctic veteran and a research scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center in California.
“Like Mars, it’s cold and dry. The mean annual temperature in the valleys is minus 4 Fahrenheit. On Mars it’s minus 20 Fahrenheit. One of the questions we’d like to answer is how much colder it could get before life would die out, as we think it has on Mars.”
Scientists have found lichens and bacteria that thrive even within some of the frozen sandstone in the Antarctic valleys. Divers have found phytoplankton--plants such as algae--flourishing beneath lake ice.
“The main lesson we’ve learned in the Antarctic is that liquid water is an absolutely non-negotiable requirement for life,” McKay said. “The organisms exist in the sandstone, because during the summer the occasional snow melts and the water percolates into the rocks, which are able to hold the moisture and sustain life.”
The techniques developed to search for life in the dry valleys will be used on Mars. Results from unmanned missions don’t offer much hope that such life exists, but there is evidence that the planet once had enough water to support it.
“We’ll look at the ancient lake beds for fossils and into the permafrost for life,” McKay said. “Another possibility might be places where there is subsurface volcanic activity that could be maintaining liquid water.”
Sophisticated robots, already proving useful in Antarctica, will pave the way for any human exploration of Mars. A space flight may carry a small robot to the planet as early as 1997. Former President George Bush advocated a manned mission by 2019, but no specific program has been proposed.
Replacing divers, a new, sledlike underwater robot studied life forms in one of the Antarctic lakes late last year. The robot used “telepresence,” a technology envisioned for future space exploration that allows a scientist wearing a video headset to see through cameras carried by a remote-controlled robot.
Not far from McMurdo, a larger, eight-legged, spidery-looking robot named Dante attempted a descent inside Mt. Erebus, an active volcano. Although the mission was scrubbed after a fiber-optic cable was severed, it was still deemed a success.
Sensors on the robot guided it through tricky terrain and created three-dimensional images of the landscape that were relayed to a TV monitor at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
Neither of these two robots is expected to end up on any distant planet, but some of their capabilities might. “We’re looking at ways to make the most effective use of robotic technology for future planetary missions,” said David B. Lavery, a NASA telerobotics expert.
Three solar panels provided electric power for the dry-valley lake camp, eliminating the fear of diesel-fuel spills and the intrusion of generator noise.
“The lack of noise was something that the field camp personnel appreciated much more than the Antarctic support establishment would care to admit,” said John D. Rummel, who heads NASA’s analog effort. “Having a solar-power station up there was ideal. It was real bliss.”
Besides reducing pollution, solar power would save money; it is expensive to ferry diesel fuel by air to remote camps and the South Pole station. During the round-the-clock daylight of Antarctic summer--winter in the Northern Hemisphere--the solar panels someday may provide power for the station while simultaneously recharging fuel cells for use during the dark winter.
In the next two to four winters, researchers hope to farm fresh vegetables at the South Pole station and to start water-recycling and waste-treatment programs.
Experts think that fresh food would improve the physical and psychological well-being of people wintering at the Pole--benefits that would also apply to long-duration human space missions.
