Europe, Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines

SCIENCE-EUROPE: A Long Trek to Mars

Julio Godoy* - Tierramérica

PARIS, Feb 24 2004 (IPS) - The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced plans to send the first manned mission to Mars by 2033. But it faces three decades of hard work in creating crucial life-support technologies to meet that goal.

The agency has a detailed timeline that must be kept if it is to send a human crew to "red planet", Dietrich Vennemann, ESA research director in charge of manned missions, told Tierramérica.

"ESA must first confirm the technical premises established by its engineers over the past three years," he said.

The agency’s Mars research forms part of the Aurora programme, introduced in 2001 by the European Union for exploration of the Solar System.

The calendar for sending humans to Mars begins in 2007, with a mission aimed at testing technology for a spaceship’s high-speed re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.

"That mission is the first major technical challenge. To reduce the duration of a mission to Mars, we have calculated that the minimum travel velocity necessary is 12 km per second. To date, ESA has used spacecraft capable of a maximum speed of 7.6 km per second," said Vennemann, noting that this great difference has consequences for the heat resistance of materials used in spaceship manufacturing.

In 2009, if ESA is able to achieve satisfactory velocities, it will send a first ship to Mars for biological research, to collect mineral and gas samples in order to determine the presence of life, past or present. Those samples would return to Earth between 2011 and 2014.

"Our first missions should be based on microtechnology that can be transported on a spaceship and utilised on Mars. That microtechnology is going to be developed for the analysis of mineral and gas samples from Mars that we are able to bring back to Earth," Franco Ongaro, director of the Aurora programme, told Tierramérica.

By 2014, ESA plans to test technologies to support manned missions, such as respiratory systems for the astronauts and protection against solar radiation. From 2014 to 2018 it will test solar energy propulsion, controlled landings and orbits.

Vennemann noted that the atmosphere of Mars is mainly carbon dioxide, which humans cannot breathe, and that solar radiation is much greater on the red planet than it is on Earth.

"Before we send astronauts to Mars, we have to develop the technology necessary to overcome those two obstacles, and be able to establish it in a continuous and useable form on the planet," he said.

Furthermore, the manned space missions in the past 40 years have lasted no more than 400 days. "A manned mission to Mars would probably last a thousand days. That means we have to work hard to create technical supports" for survival in outer space, he said.

Ongaro says that sending astronauts to Mars is essential for conducting exhaustive research, given that robots and computers are limited in their capacity for on-the-spot analysis.

"In the history of scientific research, all discoveries have been made by humans. Robots have only repeated already known experiments," he said.

Furthermore, said the programme director, "seeing astronauts in space has motivated thousands of young people to study math, biology and physics, and that has helped strengthen our scientific development."

As for the cost of a manned Mars mission, Ongaro said it would be a good investment for Europe, representing less than a dollar a year per person. "We spend an average of 50 dollars a year on cosmetics per person in a year, and an average of 10 dollars per person a year on going to the cinema."

"Half of the expenses will return to the state coffers in the form of taxes, and the other half will pay salaries of engineers and professors, which improves the scientific wealth of the whole world," he said.

The European probe Beagle II, which landed on Mars in December, lost contact with the Earth control station, but the first European exploration spacecraft, Mars Express, is considered a complete success.

Mars Express has sent data to Earth since its instruments went online on Jan. 5, and it achieved its definitive orbit around Mars on Jan. 28.

It has a radio transmitter whose signal is received in Australia, investigating the chemical composition of the Mars atmosphere, ionosphere and surface. It also carries an Omega camera, with an infrared spectrometer that has identified frozen water and carbon dioxide on Mars.

The spacecraft also has a laboratory to analyse neutral energy plasma and atoms, to determine whether the erosion caused by solar radiation caused the lack of water across most of the surface, and an ultraviolet spectrometer for measuring the distribution of ozone and water vapour in the atmosphere.

Ongaro assures that the European space research is not for military purposes. "I can’t think of any military uses for this research. On the contrary, the experience of the past 30 years proves that studying the universe has created a feeling of gregariousness in humanity, an inclination towards peace," he said.

He also ruled out that Europe is competing with the United States, which announced its own manned mission to Mars, to take place sometime after 2020.

"At ESA we don’t feel like we are in competition with any other space agency in the rest of the world. Working here are Italians like me, Germans like Vennemann, and from all countries of Europe. And there are even Canadian engineers who regularly use our equipment," he said.

(* Julio Godoy is an IPS correspondent. Originally published Feb. 14 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)