MSC Expedition One to MDRS - A 30-Day Phased Mission

Rocky · 2002-07-18 15:49:49

I'm organizing a 30-Day mission to the Mars Desert Research Station, on behalf of the Mars Society of Canada, and the Mars Desert Research Station Science Commitee.

MSC is essentially renting the station for a month. We are raising the funds ourselves through sponsorship arrangements, though some crewmembers are paying their own travel costs.

Visit MSC Expedition One to learn more about it.

--Rocky

turbo · 2002-08-23 10:38:41

With the Devon Island crew's reports on improvements to the hab there, is there any plans to upgrade or modify the Utah hab before MSC Expedition One?

I'm thinking about the heat problem in the upper level and a recirculation system to make a "shirtsleeves" environment throughout the hab.

I have a few ideas about support systems in the habs, and I'd like to get everyone's opinions on them rather than just beam them to the Hab Team. A little brainstorming can save a lot of wrench-turning right?

This can get real interesting
turbo, your favorite electronics student

Rocky · 2002-08-23 13:53:29

At this year's convention past crewmembers and mission support people got together over pizza to discuss several problems with the hab -- the toilet issue, water and power, a few other things. There will be upgrades to the MDRS hab this September. A new generator will be installed, and solutions to the "bucket brigade" have been put forth. I'm not sure if there is an intention to get an air conditioner in there. Email Frank Schubert and ask, and propose your ideas: therub9@aol.com

The expedition takes place in February, but other crews will begin mission this October.

Phobos · 2002-08-23 20:22:14

No air conditioner in the desert hab? ACK! Even in October it'll be a sweltering hell!

Palomar · 2002-08-24 12:44:06

No air conditioner in the desert hab? ACK! Even in October it'll be a sweltering hell!

*Oh yeeaaah.

And they'll be shivering with cold at night, unless the hab has a heater. You gotta love the desert!

--Cindy

turbo · 2002-08-24 13:31:18

I'm thinking more on a simple recirculation system to distribute the heat. A true air conditioning system would require too much power. I'd rather go solar or wind for a few small fans than load the generator any further.

Now to tackle a more basic issue...the toilets. Why incinerator types? They smell and give only useless ashes. The BIOLET brand is a composting type, needs no water, no sewer lines. The company hypes no odors AND the waste becomes free fertilizer. Hmmm, something for the greenhouse that does not need to be trucked to MDRS or flown into FMARS, and the supply can be replenished as long as a hab crew is around. http://www.biolet.com (no I don't work for the company, my folks were going to buy one)

turbo, who says laying sewer lines in a EVA suit is a waste of oxygen.

Phobos · 2002-08-24 18:00:26

Yeah, the last thing we'd want to do on Mars is lay leach lines. Talk about dumping bacteria onto the Martian surface. No problems finding life there! :0 Actually I think the ESA is doing a lot of work with processing human waste for a Mars mission. It's called the Melissa project or something like that.

*Oh yeeaaah.
And they'll be shivering with cold at night, unless the hab has a heater. You gotta love the desert!

Oh yeah, I know all about that "broiling by day frozen solid by night" personality of the desert.

Adrian · 2002-08-25 04:39:47

You've hit something interesting there Phobos. Seeing as a major part of a human mission to Mars will be to look for life, avoiding any type of contamination is a must. So how do you dispose of waste in a secure manner, and how do you do it for a mission that will last months? Are current recycling systems so good that we can avoid external waste disposal, period, or will we have to take along some sort of hermetically sealed waste disposal container (perhaps several) and bury them every so often?

Phobos · 2002-08-25 18:24:36

I think in the Melissa project their shooting to create a completely self-enclosed waste treatment system where the end products can be used as fertilizer. It's not exactly a project I'd want to be working on, but I think we do need to find ways to avoid contaminating the surface as much as possible. I'll try to dig up some links on that system.

Shaun Barrett · 2002-08-27 06:26:56

I disagree with the notion that we can "avoid contaminating the surface as much as possible". (Please excuse me using your words, Phobos. I certainly don't mean to belittle your valuable contributions in any way, but your words exemplify the concept I think needs examining.)
First of all (yes, I'm back up on my soap-box again! ), I think Mars has had life at least as long as Earth.
Secondly, even if I'm wrong, we've sent contaminated probes to Mars in the past anyway. So we've almost certainly broken any quarantine that may have existed.
Thirdly, and this is my main point, even if everything I've said up to this juncture is nonsense, you simply cannot send humans to Mars and avoid contaminating the place with bacteria and moulds. It can't be done!
Eliminating ALL bacteria in a given space is impossible without using extraordinary means such as powerful chemicals and/or high levels of lethal radiation. An astronaut has to get into an airlock in the Hab in order to get out onto the Martian surface. His/her suit is covered in microbes of different kinds and so are the walls of the airlock. Then you have to open the outer door and step onto the planetary surface outside. There is no practical way to avoid some of those microbes getting out onto the surface with the astronaut.
Most will die in the inhospitable conditions they encounter, but some will make it to the surface, perhaps in dormant form, and maybe find their way into the subsurface water-table. And this scenario takes no account of any outgassing (leakage) from the suits used and the Hab itself, and any means devised to dispose of human wastes.
Some contamination is inevitable. And, given the reproductive powers of bacteria, some contamination might just as well be massive contamination!
Human missions mean major contamination and we'll just have to get used to the idea. It's time to face reality.

Adrian · 2002-08-27 06:32:31

I agree with you in some aspects Shaun - in that contamination is inevitable - but I think you've missed something. If we're looking for life on Mars, and using the reasonable assumption that any extant life there would be microbial, then we don't want to be in a situation where we find some microbes but don't know whether they're from Mars or whether we brought them from Earth. Hence, we need to avoid contamination as much as possible.

Personally, I don't think it'll be that much of a problem - if we take reasonable precautionary measures, there will be very little if any contamination. Also, if we find microbes on Mars they will likely look very different from Earth microbes, due to divergent evolution under different environmental pressures. Still, it's wise to be careful.

Josh Cryer · 2002-08-27 15:42:50

First of all (yes, I'm back up on my soap-box again! ), I think Mars has had life at least as long as Earth.

Well, slight contamination really wouldn't destroy the chances of finding fossils. And I suspect any detection of life past of present, would be solidified by fossilized specimens.

In Blue Mars, Ann was distraught because life was found on Mars. My question, where are the fossils?

Secondly, even if I'm wrong, we've sent contaminated probes to Mars in the past anyway. So we've almost certainly broken any quarantine that may have existed.

Pathfinder probably did contaminate the local area with some spores, but other probes (the Viking's, Surveyor) went through very strict decontamination processes. Still, they all met NASA guidelines for contamination, as far as I know.

So it's not like a quarantine is really ?broken.?

Thirdly, [...] you simply cannot send humans to Mars and avoid contaminating the place with bacteria and moulds. It can't be done!

We have to try... answering the question as to whether or not there was life on Mars is important, but a much more important question is what kind of life existed there, and whether or not it still exists there. DNA based life is the only life we know of, so the likelihood of the lifeforms being DNA is high.

The question really is whether or not life still exists there, and what kind of life it is. The more contamination there is, the less our chance is at discovering the answer to this.

Plus, let's not forget... waste is inefficient... human waste contains important chemicals not found in quantitiy on Mars. Whether or not they're necessary, I dunno...

Phobos · 2002-08-27 22:50:18

I disagree with the notion that we can "avoid contaminating the surface as much as possible". (Please excuse me using your words, Phobos. I certainly don't mean to belittle your valuable contributions in any way, but your words exemplify the concept I think needs examining.)

I agree that it'll be impossible to avoid spreading bacteria around on the surface but I was more or less thinking that we should do what is reasonably possible to keep the contamination to a minimum. I also hope Adrian is right that if we do find life on Mars it'll be so different from Earth life that it'll be very unlikely that Earth and Mars life came from the same sources. I think if we had strong evidence that life developed completely independently on Mars and Earth it would make a strong statement that life isn't a freak occurance in the universe.

Shaun Barrett · 2002-08-28 01:46:17

Thanks everyone, for responding to my comments.
I THINK I get your drift, inasmuch as I comprehend that less contamination is better than more.
What I'm thinking is that bacteria divide every so many minutes (Adrian, as a biologist, will be in a position to provide details on this), which means that during a period of weeks or months they can multiply enormously. This is almost a geometric progression (not quite, because of natural attrition, food supply considerations, etc.) and it means that a few bacteria, or even just one bacterium, has the potential to become untold trillions of trillions in a relatively short period.
If I can just reiterate the idea that past probes have contaminated Mars. I am referring particularly to Soviet probes. The Mars-2 lander, in 1971, crashed onto the surface, as did Mars-6 in 1974. Mars-3 successfully soft landed on Mars in 1971, but communication was lost after only 90 seconds.
There was great competition between the USA and the USSR in those days. There were even instances of Soviet craft being rushed to the launch pad to try and overtake an American Mars probe already on its way to Mars! How rigorous were the biological contamination precautions? How much money would you be willing to bet, that not a single Terran organism was present on any of those three Soviet probes I've mentioned? I can tell you honestly, I wouldn't bet a cent!!
It was established back in the 1960s, using 'Mars jars' in which Martian conditions were duplicated, that many kinds of Earthly bacteria and moulds are perfectly capable of surviving, and even prospering, in the environment of Martian regolith. Carl Sagan pointed out that Earth microbes or their spores, attached to grains of dust, could readily be transported around the Martian globe by the incessant winds. '"In this way", he wrote, "descendants of just one micro-organism could, in theory, give Mars in a few years as many microbes as exist on Earth."
Some Earth microbes have probably been dividing and spreading on Mars since 1971! That's 31 years!! And we're not counting any bugs which have arrived since then on American probes, however hard they may have tried to sterilise those. There probably isn't anywhere on the planet that doesn't have a healthy colony of something from Earth growing happily in the soil or under the rocks!
I hate to go on and on like a broken gramophone record, but I think we're locking the gate after the horse has bolted!
???

Adrian · 2002-08-28 03:43:39

Bacterial growth is a geometric progression, yes, but in reality the doubling time never reaches a few minutes. From what I remember, some of the fastest growing bacteria still needs half an hour to double - and that's only if they're in a growth solution!

There isn't a lot of energy that bacteria could use on Mars anywhere; not that much light or gases, and the temperature is so low that cellular operations will be slowed down. Even in the 'best' conditions for bacteria on Mars, places far underground where you have substrates like methane hanging about, the bacteria wouldn't be able to grow that fast because you can't get that much energy or growth out of methane.

Basically, Mars is an extremely hostile environment for any kind of life. I do think that bacteria may be able to survive and perhaps even grow in some places on Mars, but the surface would be the most hostile place. I suspect that if you went to Mars and did a microscopic analysis of the probes there, you would find bacteria. Dead bacteria, or bacterial spores that are dormant until placed into a favorable growth environment (which isn't present on Mars). Also, the few types of bacteria that could conceivably survive on Mars from Earth can only be found in extreme conditions, e.g. deep underground or underwater. In other words, not the type of bacteria you'd find in a clean room.

Josh Cryer · 2002-08-28 15:18:03

Subsurface water reservoirs probably exist on Mars, as indicated by the seepage we see. And this seepage happens near the equator.

The best places to find life, in my opinion, would be inside of mini-magnetospheres near the equator. Atmospheric degeration is slowed inside of these magnetospheres, and the overall enviroment is more Earthlike (in that solar rays are deflected).

But yeah, clean room bacteria is easy to spot.

Shaun Barrett · 2002-08-29 00:11:44

Thanks, Adrian!
Your response is just the sort of information I enjoy getting. As one would expect from a biologist, you have put forward a well-reasoned argument which I find persuasive.
I can accept that even if contamination has occurred, it may well be that it has been naturally 'contained' by the very nature of the environment. Or, at least, slowed to a crawl in its propagation.
This is food for thought which I will chew over and keep 'on file' as I gather more information in my web-browsing and other reading. You've stopped me in my tracks and I will reconsider the space-probe contamination issue in the light of what you've written.
I don't think, however, that it changes my views on impact transfer of life between Earth and Mars over the ages. I still think a thriving biota will be found on Mars, though I will give more thought to my position on the effect of more recent, human-mediated biological additions to the mix!
And yes, Josh, I see your point about those areas of Mars where the solar wind is effectively deflected by the remnant crustal magnetic field. If there is a sub-surface biota, perhaps microbes will be found closer to the surface in these areas because of the lesser radiation. Incidentally, is a water-rich regolith more impervious to radiation than a dry regolith, i.e. is water (or ice) a significant radiation shield?

Phobos · 2002-08-30 17:50:32

And yes, Josh, I see your point about those areas of Mars where the solar wind is effectively deflected by the remnant crustal magnetic field. If there is a sub-surface biota, perhaps microbes will be found closer to the surface in these areas because of the lesser radiation. Incidentally, is a water-rich regolith more impervious to radiation than a dry regolith, i.e. is water (or ice) a significant radiation shield?

Actually, water is an excellent radiation shield. Water pools are used by nuclear power plants for storing spent nuclear fuel before it's shipped off for disposal because it both keeps the rods cool and blocks a lot of the radiation. That's why I think if we build structures on Mars we should incorpate thick windowpanes that contain a layer of water between them to block radiation. I'm not sure how much water you would need though to make having large windows safe so maybe that idea is impracticle.

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#1 2002-07-18 15:49:49

Re: MSC Expedition One to MDRS - A 30-Day Phased Mission

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Re: MSC Expedition One to MDRS - A 30-Day Phased Mission

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Re: MSC Expedition One to MDRS - A 30-Day Phased Mission

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Re: MSC Expedition One to MDRS - A 30-Day Phased Mission

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Re: MSC Expedition One to MDRS - A 30-Day Phased Mission

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Re: MSC Expedition One to MDRS - A 30-Day Phased Mission

#7 2002-08-24 18:00:26

Re: MSC Expedition One to MDRS - A 30-Day Phased Mission

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Re: MSC Expedition One to MDRS - A 30-Day Phased Mission

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Re: MSC Expedition One to MDRS - A 30-Day Phased Mission

#10 2002-08-27 06:26:56

Re: MSC Expedition One to MDRS - A 30-Day Phased Mission

#11 2002-08-27 06:32:31

Re: MSC Expedition One to MDRS - A 30-Day Phased Mission

#12 2002-08-27 15:42:50

Re: MSC Expedition One to MDRS - A 30-Day Phased Mission

#13 2002-08-27 22:50:18

Re: MSC Expedition One to MDRS - A 30-Day Phased Mission

#14 2002-08-28 01:46:17

Re: MSC Expedition One to MDRS - A 30-Day Phased Mission

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Re: MSC Expedition One to MDRS - A 30-Day Phased Mission

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Re: MSC Expedition One to MDRS - A 30-Day Phased Mission

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Re: MSC Expedition One to MDRS - A 30-Day Phased Mission

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Re: MSC Expedition One to MDRS - A 30-Day Phased Mission

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