Podcast: Are We Ready to Start Settlements Off-Planet?

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Credit: Penguin Press

You may want to tune into another episode from The Planetary Society’s podcast Planetary Radio is you are pondering space settlements on the Moon and Mars. The recent program, A City on Mars, is a discussion with authors Kelly and Zach Weinersmith who wrote “A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?“

The bottom line is that we should not rush towards permanent settlements at either location until we know more about the human body, the human mind, and human politics (good luck with the last one).

The conversation covers a variety of risks, including the effects of gravity on the human body, the ability to procreate in space, and the effectiveness of treaties as nations plan to settle and mine the Moon and Mars. The authors note that we have not had ample time to study all of these issues even with the International Space Station (ISS) in orbit because this has not been the focus of many space efforts to date. For instance, the ISS does not test the impact of radiation on humans because it is in low Earth orbit within the protection of the planet’s magnetic field.

Overall, the authors advise time and more study before jumping into a settlement. This may mean putting off permanent settlements for a few hundred years.

And what about Elon Musk’s plan to start shipping colonists to Mars in his lifetime? As with many things related to Mr. Musk, he does oversell ideas. His energy in the infrastructure realm is good, but his predictions related to humanity in general are usually unreliable.

Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of a Martian space city. (SpaceX)

AI Shown to be Useful for a Mars Mission

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Martian impact crater located on Vastitas Borealis with residual water ice. (ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum))

While the media is continually writing about artificial intelligence (AI) doing a kid’s homework and then destroying the world, maybe AI does have some utility in preparing us for a second world.

A study published in Nature Synthesis found that AI may be useful in finding ways to extract oxygen from water on Mars. Scientists from China used AI to analyze about 3.7 million formulae to identify a chemical that could break down water. A single researcher would have needed about 2,000 years to perform similar analysis.

While other programs are also looking at ways to extract oxygen from the Martian surface or atmosphere (such as NASA’s MOXIE), this study demonstrates the power of AI and its ability to potentially produce other needed material for survival on Mars.

Mr. Musk may not like AI, but he may want to have it on hand if he ever finds himself on Mars.

Space Stories: Curiosity Continues, Exoplanets with Dinosaurs, and Nasty Jupiters

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Image (Credit): Curiosity’s view of the Martian surface. (NASA)

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—NASA JPL: “NASA’s Curiosity Rover Clocks 4,000 Days on Mars“

Four thousand Martian days after setting its wheels in Gale Crater on Aug. 5, 2012, NASA’s Curiosity rover remains busy conducting exciting science. The rover recently drilled its 39th sample then dropped the pulverized rock into its belly for detailed analysis. To study whether ancient Mars had the conditions to support microbial life, the rover has been gradually ascending the base of 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) Mount Sharp, whose layers formed in different periods of Martian history and offer a record of how the planet’s climate changed over time.

—Cornell University: “‘Jurassic Worlds’ Might be Easier to Spot than Modern Earth“

Things may not have ended well for dinosaurs on Earth, but Cornell University astronomers say the “light fingerprint” of the conditions that enabled them to emerge here provide a crucial missing piece in our search for signs of life on planets orbiting alien stars. Their analysis of the most recent 540 million years of Earth’s evolution, known as the Phanerozoic Eon, finds that telescopes could better detect potential chemical signatures of life in the atmosphere of an Earth-like exoplanet more closely resembling the age the dinosaurs inhabited than the one we know today.

—UC Riverside: “Giant Planets Cast a Deadly Pall“

Jupiter, by far the biggest planet in our solar system, plays an important protective role. Its enormous gravitational field deflects comets and asteroids that might otherwise hit Earth, helping create a stable environment for life. However, giant planets elsewhere in the universe do not necessarily protect life on their smaller, rocky planet neighbors. A new Astronomical Journal paper details how the pull of massive planets in a nearby star system are likely to toss their Earth-like neighbors out of the “habitable zone.” This zone is defined as the range of distances from a star that are warm enough for liquid water to exist on a planet’s surface, making life possible.

India Has Even Greater Space Ambitions

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Image (Credit): Logo of the Indian Space Research Organization. (ISRO)

After recently sending a rover to the Moon and a spaceship to the Sun, India announced plans to build its own space station by 2035 and also send its own astronaut to the Moon by 2040. It also wants to start work on missions to Venus and Mars. How is that for ambitious?

In a press release this week, India’s Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi stated the following:

Building on the success of the Indian space initiatives, including the recent Chandrayan-3  and Aditya L1 Missions, Prime Minister directed that India should now aim for new and ambitious goals, including setting up ‘Bharatiya Antariksha Station’ (Indian Space Station) by 2035 and sending first Indian to the Moon by 2040.

To realize this Vision, the Department of Space will develop a roadmap for Moon exploration. This will encompass a series of Chandrayaan missions, the development of a Next Generation Launch Vehicle (NGLV), construction of a new launch pad, setting up human-centric Laboratories and associated technologies.

Prime Minister also called upon Indian scientists to work towards interplanetary missions that would include a Venus Orbiter Mission and a Mars Lander.

The space race continues with India showing itself as a strong player in space, potentially replacing Russia as one of the key space-faring nations. It benefits everyone to have more nations studying our solar system. It is unfortunate that Russia has concerned itself with less dignified matters back here on Earth. Maybe it will look to the stars again one day soon.

Space Stories: Roving Students, Preparing for Roman Times, and a New Space Center

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Image (Credit): Students at this year’s obstacle course at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center during NASA’s Human Exploration Rover Challenge event. (NASA)

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—NASA: “Dozens of Student Teams Worldwide to Compete in NASA Rover Challenge“

NASA has selected 72 student teams to begin an engineering design challenge to build human-powered rovers that will compete next April at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, near the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center. Celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2024, the Human Exploration Rover Challenge tasks high school, college, and university students to design, build, and test lightweight, human-powered rovers on an obstacle course simulating lunar and Martian terrain, all while completing mission-focused science tasks.

—Space.com: “NASA’s Roman Space Telescope will Launch in 2027. Here’s How Scientists are Getting Ready“

NASA is mobilizing the scientific community to ensure the agency’s next big space telescope will be ready to deliver a “big picture” view of the universe almost immediately after launching. The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope — also known as the Roman Space Telescope, or just Roman — is set to launch in 2027 and will view the cosmos with a staggeringly wide field of view. Its big-picture observations of distant and early galaxies could help scientists solve the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy. Collectively, this so-called dark universe accounts for 95% of the energy and matter in the cosmos, yet the true nature of dark matter and dark energy eludes scientists.

—SF YIMBY: “UC Berkeley Announces $2 Billion Space Center At NASA Ames Research Center“

New plans have been revealed for a $2 billion research center run by UC Berkeley at the NASA Ames Center in Mountain View, Santa Clara County. The Berkeley Space Center, as it will be called, will reshape 36 acres on the sprawling Ames Research Center, providing a hub for future companies to collaborate with the school and NASA scientists & engineers to improve technology for aviation, space exploration, and how people live and work in space.