New report outlines science priorities for human Mars exploration

(Press-News.org) UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — As humanity prepares to take its first steps on Mars, a comprehensive report released today (Dec. 9) from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and steered by scientists at Penn State lays out a detailed science strategy to guide the initial human missions to the red planet.  

The report, commissioned by NASA, identifies the highest priority scientific objectives for the missions as well as proposes four distinct mission campaigns designed to maximize the scientific return of the first three human landings on Mars. The report is intended to guide government and industry decision-makers, the scientific community and the general public. 

Researchers at Penn State served on the report’s steering committee as well as contributed across multiple panels, influencing the report’s scientific priorities in atmospheric science, astrobiology, biological and physical sciences and human health.  

“Penn State expertise helped shape the nation’s highest priority science objectives and recommendations for human exploration of Mars,” said Andrew Read, Penn State’s senior vice president for research. “This is a thrilling moment for us as scientists. We are setting the guideposts that will transform our knowledge of Mars and, on a deeper level, our place in the cosmos. It underscores Penn State’s research excellence and the caliber of our faculty, whose vision and expertise are influencing the future of space exploration.” 

The 240-page report provides a science-driven roadmap for human Mars exploration, balancing scientific goals with existing NASA mission plans and technological capacity. It is essentially a scientific playbook for the first crewed missions to Mars, describing the “what” and “why” that will guide human exploration of the red planet, explained James Pawelczyk, associate professor of physiology and kinesiology at Penn State and member of the report’s steering committee. Pawelczyk’s research focuses on neural control of circulation and human physiology in spaceflight. 

“This report is considering exploration in a very different way than we have conducted human spaceflight before,” said Pawelczyk, who flew aboard the NASA STS-90 Space Shuttle mission as a payload specialist and has logged over 381 hours in space. “We are considering the science of Mars itself, its geology, but there will also be the science of being on Mars. Mars is this novel environment that people will live in — and maybe the most profound part of it is you'll look up and somewhere among the star field will be a tiny, little bluish dot and that will be Earth. This will be the farthest and the most isolated that humans have ever been.” 

The comprehensive report is an evolution of NASA’s Moon to Mars Objectives — a framework that uses lunar mission to develop and test what’s needed for human exploration beyond Earth — building on the science objectives in the current framework as well as identifying goals that may be missing. A separate report will determine the high priority science objectives for the in-space phases of the crewed missions to Mars. 

"Getting humans to Mars and back is a doable goal for the next 20 years,” said James Kasting, an emeritus Atherton Professor of Geosciences at Penn State, who served on the report’s steering committee and whose expertise includes atmospheric evolution and planetary atmospheres. “We have to agree about how careful we should be about planetary protection, though, both forward and backwards. I'm for making reasonable assumptions about how best to do so, assumptions that allow us to push forward." 

The report details the most crucial objectives across all relevant branches of science and prioritizes the objectives into campaigns to be undertaken on the surface of Mars during the first three landings. To meet its objectives, each campaign has a roadmap that outlines equipment and other capacity requirements; landing site criteria such as areas with accessible ice or reachable caves; and key samples and measurements that must be made before human arrival on Mars, while crews are on Mars or when back on Earth. The report also considers critical parameters, such as the size of the crew or duration of time spent on the surface of Mars, and how that might impact how the campaigns are prioritized.  

The top-priority objectives identified in the report are: 

Determine if, in the exploration zone, evidence can be found for any of the following: habitability, indigenous extant or extinct life, and/or indigenous prebiotic chemistry  Characterize past and present water and CO2 cycles and reservoirs within the exploration zone to understand their evolution  Characterize and map the geologic record and potential niche habitats within the exploration zone to reveal Mars’s evolution and to provide geologic context to other investigations, including the study of bolide impacts, volcanic and intrusive igneous activity, the sedimentary record, landforms and volatiles, including liquids and ices  Determine the longitudinal impact of the integrated Martian environment on crew physiological, cognitive and emotional health, including team dynamics and confirm effectiveness of countermeasures  Determine what controls the onset and evolution of major dust storms, which dominate present-day atmospheric variability  Characterize the Martian environment for in situ resource utilization (ISRU) and determine the applications associated with the ISRU processing, ultimately for the full range of materials supporting permanent habitation but with an early focus on water and propellants  Determine whether the integrated Martian environment affects reproduction or the functional genome across multiple generations in at least one model plant species and one model animal species  Determine throughout the mission whether microbial population dynamics and species distribution in biological systems and habitable volumes are stable and are not detrimental to astronaut health and performance  Characterize the effects of Martian dust on human physiology and hardware lifetime  Determine the longitudinal impact of the integrated Martian environment on plant and animal physiology and development across multiple generations where possible as part of an integrated ecosystem of plants, microbes and animals  Characterize the primary and secondary radiation at key locations in the crew habitat and astrobiological sampling sites to contextualize sample collection and improve models of future mission risk  “This has been a dream and an honor to conduct this report for the nation,” said Pawelczyk, who explained that the team reached out to hundreds of subject matter experts to collect information for the report. “If we’re successful, humans will have set foot on another planetary body, on another planet, for the first time. And the message we’re sending with this report is that science comes with us.” 

Other researchers affiliated with Penn State contributed to the report. Laura Rodriguez, staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute who earned her doctorate at Penn State, served as member of the Panel on Astrobiology. Bruce Link, chief science officer for Amentum, earned his doctorate at Penn State and served as a member of the Biological and Physical Sciences and Human Factors panel. Katherine Freeman, Evan Pugh University Professor of Geosciences at Penn State, served as a reviewer, providing an independent review of the report draft, evaluating quality and scientific rigor. 

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