Date: June 28, 2011
Title: A Research Station on Mars – The Boreas Project Part 2
Podcaster: Robert Yule Elphick
Organization: The British Interplanetary Society
Links: http://www.bis-space.com/
Description: The British Interplanetary Society recently sponsored a project called Boreas. Its objective was to design a research station to be placed on the north pole of Mars in 2037. The research station was conceived to operate for at least one Mars year – possibly longer with exchanged crews. It was designed to be run by a crew of up to ten members. The project was executed over several years and finally published in a report as a series of papers. This is part two of three podcasts which summarizes some of the results of the project.
Bio: Robert Yule Elphick was raised and educated in Britain, receiving degrees in Applied Physics and Geophysics & Planetary Physics. He has spent his life studying planets working mostly in the Oil and Gas industry but following exploration of other planets as well. He is a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society where he became a member of the Boreas Project contributing to the Astronomy, Geophysics, Information Technology, and station design aspects of the project. He now lives on Whidbey Island in Washington, USA where he is retired and volunteers in various ways teaching technology and science.
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Transcript:
SCRIPT – Part 2
The British Interplanetary Society recently sponsored a project called Boreas. Its objective was to design a research station to be placed on the north pole of Mars in 2037. The research station was conceived to operate for at least one Mars year – possibly longer with exchanged crews. It was designed to be run by a crew of up to ten members. The project was executed over several years and finally published in a report as a series of papers.
Hello, my name is Robert Yule Elphick. I am a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society and was a member of the project Boreas team. These podcasts are based on the project study.
In this second of three episodes we will describe the geophysical (or should that be Areo-physical) research. This work is the primary reason for the research station.
The research will focus on the nature of the ice cap. The techniques that will be used are inspired by techniques used on Earth to understand the ice deposits in Antarctica and Greenland. On Earth seismic, radar, and core data have provided us with information concerning the climate of the Earth over the last couple of hundred thousand years or more. In addition we have learned about past events that have affected the atmosphere including asteroid collision events, volcanism, and other geological phenomena. We hope to gain similar insights into the dynamics of Mars’ climate and geological (or should that be areological?) activity over the history of the polar icecap. Perhaps we can also find some clues concerning past or present life. Occlusions with Methane? Amino acids? Bases?
The research station will include two external transmission towers, separated by a suitable distance, equipped with a navigation system that will allow crew members and robots to be located with high precision.
Seismic survey
Making a seismic survey will require the use of robots. Robots can set out arrays of ʻphones and then generate acoustic signals and record the echoes heard by the ʻphones. Then move the ‘phones and set out other arrays and repeat the process until there is enough data to be able to interpret the results in three dimensions for an area of ten or more square kilometers. Hopefully the results will give a clear idea of the structure of the layers within the ice cap.
Determining how the structure developed over the history of the ice cap will require new analysis techniques from those used on Earth since the properties of the ice cap will probably be different to the ice fields probed on the Earth. Just the presence of solid carbon dioxide will be interesting. We already know a little about the ice cap’s internal structure thanks to ground penetrating radar from Mars orbit.
Core and Borehole
Once the subsurface structure has been interpreted the crew will select a drilling location to attempt to obtain a complete core from top to bottom of the ice cap. The location chosen will avoid faults where there might be ʻmissing sectionʼ or ʻrepeated sectionʼ. A core representing continuous time would be highly desirable.
After obtaining an ice core, we will also lower instruments into the borehole on a wireline and then record continuous measurements as the instruments are slowly pulled up the borehole from the total depth to the surface with a winch.
The wireline instruments will include a tool to emit gamma rays to measure electron density from the Compton scattering (from which we can deduce bulk density). Additionally the photoelectric effect will be used to differentiate mineralogical components.
Natural gamma ray detectors will determine the presence of any uranium, thorium and potassium that may have been deposited in the dust which often lands on the pole.
Neutron emitters and detectors will determine how much hydrogen is in the formations, and hence water. Also the presence of minerals that absorb neutrons such as Chlorine, Boron and other rare earths.
Sonic instruments will measure the velocity of sound in the formations. This would help calibrate the seismic data with accurate velocities, as well as provide further ability to determine components of the formations.
The most important measurement made by the wireline tools is depth. The depth measurement will indicate where the core data was incomplete and the size of any missing sections. Wireline instruments such as these are used in boreholes on Earth routinely by oil and gas companies, mineral companies and scientific researchers.
Designing versions of these tools to be used in the temperatures of the Mars polar caps present quite a challenge.
Handling the core segments will require special arrangements because they need to be kept at temperatures below the melting or sublimation points of the components. A small facility will be used to examine the cores with similar measurements to those used by the borehole wireline tools as well as other scan techniques, and high resolution photographs at optical, IR and ultra violet wavelengths. We will extract interesting mineral solids, any organic materials, and gases contained within bubbles for additional research. Much of the examination of the extracted samples can be done in the laboratories of the station.
All this work will require the crew to go outside from time to time to set up the equipment, perform the operations and perform maintenance. Stepping outside is a dangerous thing to do at the north pole of Mars. It is cold. Very cold. Temperatures vary from below freezing in Summer all the way down to around −150 °C in the winter. Cold enough to solidify CO2 out of the atmosphere. A different kind of snow!
The atmosphere on Mars is very thin with a surface pressure ranging from nine to thirteen millibars at the pole compared to over one thousand millibars at sea level on Earth. It is composed mostly carbon dioxide.
In the first podcast of this series I mentioned that the ingress and egress for the station will normally be done through the module at the eight o’clock position. You will recall that half of that module is dedicated to the EVA activities. Because of all the problems experienced on the Moon in the Apollo years, much thought has been given to problem of dust and other contamination. On Mars, the winds transport large quantities of dust.
The dust particles can become charged and so readily stick to everything including space suites. A scheme has been developed whereby the space suits remain outside the station to minimize the contamination in the station.
An astronaut wishing to enter the station from outside backs up to a special recessed portal in the module wall which is a perfect fit for his backpack. The astronaut pushes the backpack into the recess until it latches with an airtight seal. The portal is then opened from the inside, and the backpack removed leaving a hole in the back of the suite for the astronaut to back out of the suit. The suit and all the dust on it, thus remains outside of the station ready for the next egress.
Eight of these recessed portals with space suits are arranged around the EVA half of the module on a porch. The porch has stairs that lead down to the ice. The eight o’clock module also has another of the emergency airlocks that we previously described in case a space suit is unable to correctly dock with its portal.
So let us now don a space suit and go outside for a look around. First we change into our inner suit with all ints medical sensors and temperature regulation devices. Then go to the portal and open it from the inside. Attach the leads and hoses to the backpack.
Grab the bar above the portal . . . lift both legs and put them through . . . and down into the suit legs . . . Bend the head low enough to go into the portal and then up into the helmet. Now, standing in the suit, we swing the backpack into place behind us and seal it with the push of a button. Now turn on the controller and check out the backpack. If it is OK according to the ‘heads-up’ readout then it is time to close the portal door and seal it with the control pad on the suit wrist. Now we unseal and unlatch the backpack from the station and we are free to walk away to the stairs and descend to the surface of the ice.
Very small sodium lights mark out the paths to the external equipment to help traverse the ice during the night – remember that at the north pole of Mars the nights are about 10 months long!
Over there I see the Nuclear generator. It supplies the power needs of the research station and associated equipment. Solar energy, of course, is not available at all in the winter.
Over there is the rig that will be used to drill the core and then log the borehole with wireline tools. The drill rig has many unique systems not required on Earth. The problem of containing any excess pressure from the borehole will require special fluids that can be used at minus one hundred and fifty degrees Centigrade. Also all the apparatus has been specially designed to work in the conditions of this polar environment. Normal lubricants and materials used on Earth do not work here.
In the other direction I can see the crew return vehicle in the distance. Our way back to mother Earth. It has been charged with fuel and oxygen obtained from the water and carbon dioxide available on Mars saving the cost of bringing it from Earth.
If I take a few more steps . . . I can see the robots that will be used to run the seismic survey of the area. Fortunately it is pretty flat here though more fractures than I had expected. They are filled in with the ‘snow’ fall of last winter and appear as colored stripes.
We can also see the site for the telescope – we will talk more about that in the next podcast of this series when we discuss astronomy from Mars.
The Report of Project Boreas, composed of a number of papers, is one hundred and ninety two pages. It can be purchased by going to the British Interplanetary Society website at B I S dash S P A C E F L I G H T. Any search engine will find it. Look in the book section.
Thanks for listening. See you on Mars!
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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