ALBERT

Description: No abstract available

Description: The surface of Mars once had abundant water flowing on its surface, but now there is a general perception that this surface is completely dry. Several lines of research have shown that there are sources of potentially large quantities of water at many locations on the surface, including regions considered as candidates for future human missions. Recent discovery of exposed water ice scarps in Martian mid-latitudes has bolstered the evidence for massive amounts of almost pure water in these regions. These favorable indications of massive quantities of water have initiated studies of changes that could be made to human Mars missions if a means could be devised that would make this water available to these crews. The proposed paper will describe progress towards developing one approach for accessing and extracting water from these mid-latitude sources. This approach relies on mechanical drills to access the water ice through overlying debris. Once the ice has been accessed, a technique known as a Rodriguez Well is used to melt the ice, store the resulting water until it is needed, and then pump the water to the surface for use. Previous work in this area has utilized a computer simulation to predict the performance of the Rodriguez Well. This simulation was developed originally to predict performance in terrestrial polar regions. While the basic approach used in this model is appropriate for a similar well on Mars, several parameters were known to require a change to correctly model the Martian environment. Some of these parameters are empirical and require experiments simulating the Martian environment to determine their value. The proposed paper will describe the experiments set up to determine the value of these parameters and compare their numerical value to the terrestrial equivalent. Finally, the proposed paper will show results from the updated computer simulation and compare results with those determined from the original version of the simulation.

Description: Early crewed Mars mission concepts developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) assumed a single, large habitat would house six crew members for a 500-day Mars surface stay. At the end of the first mission, all surface equipment-including the habitat-would be abandoned and the process would be repeated at a different Martian landing site. This work was documented in a series of NASA publications culminating with the Mars Design Reference Architecture 5.0. More recent work, dubbed the Evolvable Mars Campaign (EMC), explored whether re-using surface equipment at a single landing site could be more affordable than the Apollo-style explore-abandon-repeat mission cadence. Initial EMC assumptions preserved the single, monolithic habitat-the only difference being a new requirement to reuse the surface habitat for multiple expedition crews. A trade study comparing a single large habitat versus smaller, modular habitats leaned towards the monolithic approach as more mass-efficient. More recent work has focused on the operational aspects of building up Mars surface infrastructure over multiple missions, and has identified compelling advantages of a modular approach that should be considered before making a final decision. This paper explores Mars surface mission operational concepts and integrated system analysis, and presents an argument for the modular habitat approach.

Description: Early crewed Mars mission concepts developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) assumed a single, large habitat would house six crew members for a 500-day Mars surface stay. At the end of the first mission, all surface equipment?including the habitat--would be abandoned and the process would be repeated at a different Martian landing site. This work was documented in a series of NASA publications culminating with the Mars Design Reference Mission 5.0 (NASA-SP-2009-566). The Evolvable Mars Campaign (EMC) explored whether re-using surface equipment at a single landing site could be more affordable than the Apollo-style explore-abandon-repeat mission cadence. Initial EMC assumptions preserved the single, monolithic habitat?the only difference being a new requirement to reuse the surface habitat for multiple expedition crews. A trade study comparing a single large habitat versus smaller, modular habitats leaned towards the monolithic approach as more mass-efficient. More recent work has focused on the operational aspects of building up Mars surface infrastructure over multiple missions, and has identified compelling advantages of the modular approach that should be considered before making a final decision. This paper explores Mars surface mission operational concepts and integrated system analysis, and presents an argument for the modular habitat approach.

Description: Final document is attached. This paper describes improvements in our understanding of the nature and location of massive ice sheets on the surface of Mars as well as refinements made to a technical approach for extracting significant quantities of water from these ice sheets using a technique known as a Rodriguez Well. Recently published discoveries on Mars have reinforced the evidence for the existence and structure of these massive buried ice sheets. Using this improved understanding of the feedstock material, this paper describes estimates made regarding basic characteristics mass, power, configuration, etc. of a system that can access and extract water from these ice sheets. This paper then summarizes the basic operation of a Rodriguez Well and describes a computer simulation used to estimate the performance characteristics of this type of well. This simulation was built and used to predict the performance of similar wells operated in the Earth's Arctic and Antarctic regions. However, physical parameters (e.g., specific heat and gas constant for air, heat transfer between water and air and between ice and air, etc.) used in the simulation represent a terrestrial environment and must be adjusted for a Martian environment. A pair of experiments designed to determine the appropriate value for these parameters under Martian conditions are described. Until results from these experiments are available, published results from other sources are used in the simulation to gain an understanding of the effect that could be seen. These provisional results are discussed.

Description: NASA has been analyzing a number of mission concepts and activities that involve low-latency telerobotic (LLT) operations. One mission concept that will be covered in this presentation is Crew-Assisted Sample Return which involves the crew acquiring samples (1) that have already been delivered to space, and or acquiring samples via LLT from orbit to a planetary surface and then launching the samples to space to be captured in space and then returned to the earth with the crew. Both versions of have key roles for low-latency teleoperations. More broadly, the NASA Evolvable Mars Campaign is exploring a number of other activities that involve LLT, such as: (a) human asteroid missions, (b) PhobosDeimos missions, (c) Mars human landing site reconnaissance and site preparation, and (d) Mars sample handling and analysis. Many of these activities could be conducted from Mars orbit and also with the crew on the Mars surface remotely operating assets elsewhere on the surface, e.g. for exploring Mars special regions and or teleoperating a sample analysis laboratory both of which may help address planetary protection concerns. The operational and technology implications of low-latency teleoperations will be explored, including discussion of relevant items in the NASA Technology Roadmap and also how previously deployed robotic assets from any source could subsequently be used by astronauts via LLT.

Description: In an on-going effort to make human Mars missions more affordable and sustainable, NASA continues to investigate the innovative leveraging of technological advances in conjunction with the use of accessible Martian resources directly applicable to these missions. One of the resources with the broadest utility for human missions is water. Many past studies of human Mars missions assumed a complete lack of water derivable from local sources. However, recent advances in our understanding of the Martian environment provides growing evidence that Mars may be more "water rich" than previously suspected. This is based on data indicating that substantial quantities of water are mixed with surface regolith, bound in minerals located at or near the surface, and buried in large glacier-like forms. This paper describes an assessment of what could be done in a "water rich" human Mars mission scenario. A description of what is meant by "water rich" in this context is provided, including a quantification of the water that would be used by crews in this scenario. The different types of potential feedstock that could be used to generate these quantities of water are described, drawing on the most recently available assessments of data being returned from Mars. This paper specifically focuses on sources that appear to be buried quantities of water ice. (An assessment of other potential feedstock materials is documented in another paper.) Technologies and processes currently used in terrestrial polar regions is reviewed. One process with a long history of use on Earth and with potential application on Mars - the Rodriguez Well - is described and results of an analysis simulating the performance of such a well on Mars are presented. These results indicate that a Rodriguez Well capable of producing the quantities of water identified for a "water rich" human mission are within the capabilities assumed to be available on the Martian surface, as envisioned in other comparable Evolvable Mars Campaign assessments. The paper concludes by capturing additional findings and describing additional simulations and tests that should be conducted to better characterize the performance of the identified terrestrial technologies for accessing subsurface ice, as well as the Rodriguez Well, under Mars environmental conditions.

Description: In an on-going effort to make human Mars missions more affordable and sustainable, NASA continues to investigate the innovative leveraging of technological advances in conjunction with the use of accessible Martian resources directly applicable to these missions. One of the resources with the broadest utility for human missions is water. Many past studies of human Mars missions assumed a complete lack of water derivable from local sources. However, recent advances in our understanding of the Martian environment provides growing evidence that Mars may be more "water rich" than previously suspected. This is based on data indicating that substantial quantities of water are mixed with surface regolith, bound in minerals located at or near the surface, and buried in large glacier-like forms. This paper describes an assessment of what could be done in a "water rich" human Mars mission scenario. A description of what is meant by "water rich" in this context is provided, including a quantification of the water that would be used by crews in this scenario. The different types of potential feedstock that could be used to generate these quantities of water are described, drawing on the most recently available assessments of data being returned from Mars. This paper specifically focuses on sources that appear to be buried quantities of water ice. (An assessment of other potential feedstock materials is documented in another paper.) Technologies and processes currently used in terrestrial Polar Regions are reviewed. One process with a long history of use on Earth and with potential application on Mars - the Rodriguez Well - is described and results of an analysis simulating the performance of such a well on Mars are presented. These results indicate that a Rodriguez Well capable of producing the quantities of water identified for a "water rich" human mission are within the capabilities assumed to be available on the Martian surface, as envisioned in other comparable Evolvable Mars Campaign assessments. The paper concludes by capturing additional findings and describing additional simulations and tests that should be conducted to better characterize the performance of the identified terrestrial technologies for accessing subsurface ice, as well as the Rodriguez Well, under Mars environmental conditions.

Description: No abstract available