We have liftoff… Perseverance takes “one small step” as humanity sets its sights on the “final frontier”

On February 18, 2021, the Perseverance rover touched down on the Martian surface, marking the end of a six and a half month journey to the Red Planet. The fifth NASA rover sent to Earth’s nearest neighbor, Perseverance marks a step in an ambitious direction for humanity’s dreams of sending astronauts to the planet. Until then, one of Perseverance’s main research goals is to find any possible signs of life, past and present.

“What a great time to be alive,” astronomy teacher John Mueller said. “There is literally a helicopter [the Ingenuity robot attached to Perseverance] on Mars now. We’ve put robots and rovers on Mars before; it’s inhabited by them. For Perseverance, they picked a spot which they think is a really good candidate for finding evidence of life on Mars. We’re talking microbes and hardy bacteria. We are trying to determine if the conditions on Mars are possible for life.” 

The Jezero Crater, the rover’s landing site, may exhibit signs of life due to the possibility of water having once existed in the area.

“I know Perseverance is going to be extremely valuable in researching possible life on Mars,” senior Samuel Mollenhauer said. “The crater it’s at could have had a water source. Perseverance is going to look for different sampling areas to drill into and collect different chalk shaped samples, and leave them as deposits for a future mission to pick up and bring back to Earth. So that’s really cool.”

The research of Perseverance and other potential Mars missions excites the possibility of humanity traveling and expanding off-world.

“I think space travel is extremely important for the future of humanity,” Mollenhauer said. “If we want to be a species that has a significant chance of surviving, we need to be on more than one planet. ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.’ Expanding is very important.”

The concept of colonizing planets and moons outside of Earth might seem unrealistic for now, but it is possible for today’s fiction to transform into tomorrow’s reality.

“It might not seem very relevant in 2021, but think about where we’ll be in a hundred or two hundred years,” Mollenhauer said. “At the rate technology is advancing, who knows? Every single year we develop news things like rocket engines that are a lot more efficient and powerful, so in 200 years maybe we will even have an antimatter drive or something like that. Maybe that’s a bit far-fetched for now, but I think it’s important to the future of humanity to keep trying.”

Sending humans to another planet is a mammoth undertaking which would require many resources, but the rewards found at the destination would make the task easier and more beneficial.

“Wherever we end up going as the human race, we need oxygen and water,” Mueller said. “If we can find some of that where we’re going, then that’s less we have to take with us. A gallon of water is about eight pounds. If you go into space, even to the International Space Station, the costs can add up. For NASA, the cost of putting one pound of something into space is $10,000. So that’s $80,000 to put one gallon of water into space. But you’re taking much more than one gallon of water with you, along with other things that are heavier than water, and of course the astronauts themselves. So we have to make choices on what we’re taking, but if we can find what we need there, that’s awesome.”

In order to save space and avoid having to travel with more resources, it could be possible to gather oxygen from water on Mars.

“If they do find subterranean water, they could extract oxygen molecules from that using electrolysis,” physics teacher Steve Oppman said. “Something like that is important because even if you have a plan in place to recycle the oxygen and other things you take with you, Murphy’s Law says ‘what can go wrong will go wrong.’ You need to have - at least theoretically - the ability to extract oxygen from the atmosphere or something else that’s already there.”

The Perseverance rover may also help with solving this conundrum, researching the concept of harvesting oxygen from the Martian atmosphere. 

“Perseverance has an oxygen generator on it,” Mueller said. “They’re seeing if this robot on wheels is making oxygen from the Martian air and seeing if our technology is good enough. And if we can do it on a microscale, we can scale it up.”

Since a manned mission would be a monumental undertaking, a magnitude of patience is required. However, as the research and developmental phases leading to such a mission push for advancements in space technology, benefits could trickle down for all inhabitants of Earth regardless of the timeline.

“In terms of human exploration, I don’t expect to see it in my lifetime,” Oppman said. “But I’m curious to see what kind of technology comes out of this. NASA was big when I was in elementary school, and a lot of the stuff that we take for granted commercially was actually invented or developed due to the needs of shuttle missions and astronauts, like memory foam and aerogel. So, it’ll be interesting to see what comes out of it.”

Other contributions from space missions include the development of the video camera. Before the Apollo mission, NASA scientists knew they would need a small video camera to send. The United States’ ability to miniaturize was what allowed them to beat the Soviet Union to the Moon. 

“They could take the same capability in a much smaller package and the Americans got to the Moon with everything they wanted to,” Mueller said. “Later on they took an electric car [the Lunar Roving Vehicle] to the Moon. So, we were able to take the space program and turn it into so many things. By the end of the Apollo program, video cameras were made small, and they used that logic for a lot of things. So anytime we go to space, it’s technology-driven, and that technology has a trickle down effect.”

Such advancements still benefit man today, wireless cell phones being one example. 

“Not only can you make phone calls, you can record video and send it to anyone with a device,” Mueller said. “You can play it and edit it, all on your phone. The technology we can get by pushing for space travel will be awesome.”

In the more distant future, the technology that could be brought to places like the Moon can help humanity understand a little more about the universe.

“I could see the possibility of maybe like a telescope observatory on the Moon,” Mueller said. “Then, you wouldn’t have to worry about the refraction of light and distortion from Earth’s atmosphere, hence the reason why they put the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit. I could see a larger, more permanent version on the Moon. But maybe the observatory could be not just for light collecting, but maybe there could be radio telescopes as well. Maybe we’ll get more Moon core samples to see if it might have been another planet or a comet that got trapped in Earth’s orbit.”

Beyond the practical benefits, space missions present interesting and thought-provoking science and engineering questions.

“The part that kind of excites me, of course, is the physics end of it,” Oppman said. “For example, looking at the landing protocol, it’s not like on Earth. You can’t just deploy a big parachute because the atmosphere is a lot thinner. So, you have to look at calculations into when to drop the heat shield, when to fire the retro rockets, and other things. For me that’s pretty fascinating.”

With unmanned missions like Perseverance, the plan is to pave the way for more manned missions, particularly to return to the Moon and reach Mars. However, there are a multitude of safety problems to overcome when introducing a human factor. One is travel time - how will astronauts reach their destination when the possibility of things going wrong increases the longer they are in space?

“I think when you are looking at manned space travel, the speed is not nearly fast enough to support bringing organisms to Mars,” senior John Koth said. “It still takes about seven months to get to Mars and seven months back. That is so much time to be cooped up in a small spacecraft.”

With unmanned spacecraft, the risks are much easier to identify and solve, but while this knowledge is helpful, it does not necessarily address all the challenges of a manned mission.

“We have to ask ‘what are the risks for a human spaceflight to Mars?’” Mueller said. “We know what the risks are for robots, but for humans, it’s not a given thing. There have been unmanned crashes on Mars, once due to errors in what measurement units were used, and instead of landing their spacecraft, they smashed it. But people have learned from mistakes like this.”

With a possible manned mission to the Moon or Mars on the horizon, it becomes a question of who is financing the effort and how much risk they are willing to take.

“Now it comes down to whoever is paying for a manned mission,” Mueller said. “What is their bottom line in terms of how much risk they are going to underwrite? And if someone does underwrite the mission, how many people are you going to take? Do you have volunteers who are going to accept that if this goes south, they are almost certainly going to die? With robots, the human risk is zero, but otherwise, it’s a different story. But if you have everybody - if you have the bill payers, the leadership, support staff, and astronauts on board - then let’s go.”

The cost of the Perseverance mission was $2.7 billion ($2.9 billion if adjusted for inflation), while the predicted cost for the Artemis Program to return to the Moon is around $30 billion. These are huge figures, and with planned missions becoming more and more ambitious, it will be important to find ways to reduce these costs. However, could the money be better spent elsewhere? 

“Cost is a challenge,” Oppman said. “I’ve had a conversation with a colleague about looking at what it costs to go to the Moon or the cost of Perseverance or even the previous rover and thinking about what we could do for infrastructure, educational buildings, homelessness, poverty, and other things. Those funds could do a whole lot of good. I’m not saying the money should be used for that, but I’m bringing up the thought of ‘is it worth the cost?’ What benefit has come from space travel so far? But I don’t think it can be answered right now. I think it’ll be at least a decade or more before we can answer these questions.”

Historically, NASA has been the national leader in U.S. space exploits, but today, the introduction of private companies into the mix has changed the exploration game. Big names like SpaceX have invested billions of dollars into designing and testing new equipment and spacecraft. As a result, commercialized space travel will become more and more common. However, should any lines be drawn in how far private companies can go?

“On the one hand, private space companies don’t take taxpayer dollars which could be spent elsewhere,” Oppman said. “If you have private companies which are willing to do this, it’s great. On the flip side, those companies could decide once they’re successful and the only game in town, in theory, that they could charge whatever they want or even offer their services to our enemies. I don’t know if there are safeguards in place or not. There are pros and cons, and I can kind of see both sides of the coin for private enterprise.”

Again, with the huge potential risks of manned missions, perhaps it is best that private entities stick to the unmanned game for the time being.

“The goal of introducing more and more people into space is really cool, but I believe that’s a dangerous game to play,” senior William Engedal said. “It’s definitely cool to see new ideas, but I feel like private companies can excel the most when they are not dealing with people because then there are liabilities and it would be very hard for private companies to be successful, especially if they have a mishap.”  

Regardless of the future scheme of space exploration, space infrastructure will likely continue to grow slowly, yet steadily, as a result of humanity’s curiosity, pushing the boundaries of exploring the unknown. The challenges of these endeavors may be expensive and dangerous, but the benefits are undeniable.

“Neil deGrasse Tyson said something along the lines of ‘space and humanity right now is like mankind leaving the cave,’” Koth said. “What if we never left the caves and have been there for thousands of years and never got the courage to search for new resources: trees, other plants, and animals? Like that, I think that space will be the next frontier - the final frontier. We will be able to find more than just resources, but also knowledge on where we are in this ginormous galaxy. I think it will be a chance for us to really gain perspective.” 

By Akashraj Karthikeyan

Oshkosh West Index Volume 117 Issue VI

March 25th. 2021