NASA’s Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars on Thursday, is the fifth to complete the journey to the red planet, but when will the humans arrive?
“Between now and the mid to the late 2030s, we may start using the means that will allow us to go to the moon to send astronauts to Mars,” Steve Jurczyk, NASA acting administrator, said Thursday. The major technological challenges have more or less been solved, but many factors are still lacking for that purpose.
A trip to Mars takes about seven months, and the astronauts will spend 30 days there initially, anticipates NASA. The planet has an average temperature of 63 ° C below zero, the radiation is high there and the air consists of 95% carbon dioxide.
Gravity is barely 38% that of the Earth. But thanks to the “International Space Station, we’ve learned a lot about microgravity,” said G. Scott Hubbard, a former NASA employee who led the US space agency’s first Mars program.
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However, numerous materials and techniques have yet to be tested. Perseverance had several instruments on board with the aim of preparing future human missions.
One such tool is MOXIE, the size of a car battery, whose purpose is to produce oxygen on Mars, suck up CO2, a bit like a plant.
This oxygen can be used for breathing and also as fuel. The famous Artemis program Back to the Moon, on which NASA is now focusing its efforts, is seen as a testbed before heading to Mars.
The agency wants to use it for testing a new spacesuit, xEMU, that enables greater mobility and protects astronauts from low temperatures.
It will also be an opportunity to put some kind of nuclear power plant on the moon that can generate electricity even during dust storms, which can cover the sun on Mars for months, causing the solar panels to fail.
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What’s the importance of testing all of that on the moon? Ability to dispatch rescue teams. If something goes wrong and breaks on Mars, you’ll be away from home for years, ”explains Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics to AFP.
To Laura Forczyk, aerospace industry analyst, “It is possible” to send humans to Mars, “but for now it is safer to send robots”, for which the required safety standards are lower.
Political will
The biggest obstacle is political will, because funding depends on it. In 1990, George H.W.Bush announced man’s arrival on Mars before the 50th anniversary of the first passage on the moon, in July 2019.
The similar promises of three of his successors (his son George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump) did not translate into a concrete program. Will it be in the 2030s?
“It is possible … but without the political will of the government and Congress it will not happen,” said G. Scott Hubbard. US President Joe Biden has yet to appoint a permanent administrator for NASA or give his views on space missions.
His spokesman said only that he “supported” the Artemis program. The goal of an astronaut’s return to the moon by 2024 will incur “delays” and, as a “domino effect,” there will also be a delay for Mars, warns Laura Forczyk, who is more considering
a possible arrival on the red planet in the 2040s
AFP