{"id":17900,"date":"2019-10-27T17:55:35","date_gmt":"2019-10-27T09:55:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/lessons-from-15-year-rover-mission-mars-aint-the-kind-of-place-to-raise-your-kids\/"},"modified":"2019-10-27T17:55:35","modified_gmt":"2019-10-27T09:55:35","slug":"lessons-from-15-year-rover-mission-mars-aint-the-kind-of-place-to-raise-your-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/lessons-from-15-year-rover-mission-mars-aint-the-kind-of-place-to-raise-your-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons from 15-year rover mission: Mars ain\u2019t the kind of place to raise your kids"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_529550\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-529550\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-529550\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/19l1027-squyres-630x537.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"630\" height=\"537\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/19l1027-squyres-630x537.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/19l1027-squyres-768x655.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/19l1027-squyres-1260x1074.jpg 1260w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-529550\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Planetary scientist Steve Squyres, who headed the science team for NASA\u2019s Spirit and Opportunity rovers and now serves as Blue Origin\u2019s chief scientist, demonstrates how the rovers were parked on slanted slopes to soak up maximum solar energy during the Martian winter. (GeekWire Photo \/ Alan Boyle)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>STATE COLLEGE, Pa. \u2014 For 15 years, planetary scientist Steve Squyres\u2019 life revolved around Mars, with good reason. He was the principal investigator for one of the longest-running NASA missions on the surface of another world, executed by the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity.<\/p>\n<p>If anyone has a sense of the lay of the land on the Red Planet, it\u2019d be Squyres. So what does he think of the idea of setting up permanent cities on Mars?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy take on this one is no, I don\u2019t think so,\u201d Squyres said here today at Penn State University during the ScienceWriters 2019 conference.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s not opposed to sending people to Mars. Far from it. \u201cHuman research base? Absolutely, as soon as possible,\u201d Squyres said. It\u2019s even possible that super-rich tourists will want to travel to Mars and back, he said.<\/p>\n<p>But based on the problems that Spirit and Opportunity encountered during their longer-than-anticipated operating life on the Red Planet, plus Squyres\u2019 experience as a researcher in Antarctica and Norway\u2019s Svalbard archipelago, he isn\u2019t convinced that Mars can ever be a place to raise a family.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAntarctica is international territory,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you want to build a home, if you want to go homesteading, set up shop, build a community, build a town, nobody\u2019s going to stop you. \u2026 And yet, nobody does it. Why? Antarctica is a terrible place, it really is. And Mars is just so much worse.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He pointed out that although Mars\u2019 surface temperatures can get as high as 70 degrees Fahrenheit, the equilibrium temperature is about 80 below zero. The predominantly carbon dioxide atmosphere is less than 1 percent as dense as Earth\u2019s, and the powdery rust-red dust gets everywhere.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI guarantee you, when the first astronauts come back from Mars, and people say, \u2018What was it like?\u2019 \u2014 the first thing that they will say is, \u2018I hated the dust.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was the dust that finally got to Opportunity, a little more than a year ago, when a global dust storm turned out the lights on the solar-powered robot. Spirit had frozen up years earlier \u2014 and after months of trying unsuccessfully to re-establish contact with Opportunity, Squyres and his colleagues declared an end to the marathon mission this February.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Mars rover Opportunity ends mission after 15 years\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-DsiHTGovGI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>After Opportunity; Squyres had hoped to win NASA\u2019s support for a sample return mission to a comet. But his proposal lost out in June to the Dragonfly mission to Titan, one of Saturn\u2019s moons. Then another opportunity opened up: Just last month, he left his longtime post at Cornell University to become chief scientist at Blue Origin, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos\u2019 space venture.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m very, very fortunate to be in the job I\u2019m in right now,\u201d Squyres said. \u201cBlue Origin started off with rocket engines and small space vehicles, but as we\u2019re moving toward the first flight of New Glenn, as we\u2019re moving toward Blue Moon, as we\u2019re moving toward a human landing system as part of the Artemis program, and as we start to fly all kinds of payloads on even New Shepard, what we\u2019re finding at Blue Origin is that what we do begins to intersect with science in many, many different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>All those intersections provide opportunities for a chief scientist. For example, the New Shepard suborbital spaceship can be used to prepare the way for moon missions. \u201cWe can spin the capsule,\u201d Squyres said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to do that on an upcoming flight and get simulated lunar gravity \u2014 11 rpm and you get one-sixth G.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It just so happens that Squyres\u2019 views intersect with Bezos\u2019 views when it comes to going to the moon vs. sending settlers to Mars. \u201cMy friends who say they want to move to Mars or something \u2026 I say, \u2018Why don\u2019t you live in Antarctica for a year first, because it\u2019s a garden paradise compared to Mars,\u2019 \u201d Bezos said in 2017.<\/p>\n<p>And that means Squyres\u2019 perspective runs counter to SpaceX founder Elon Musk\u2019s view that a million settlers can be transported to Martian cities, starting well before NASA\u2019s current target date of the mid-2030s for crewed exploration missions to Mars and its moons.<\/p>\n<p>Squyres didn\u2019t mention Musk or SpaceX, but he noted that privately held companies tend to have more leeway than government-led space programs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it\u2019s very likely that sooner or later we will have a confluence of events where some organization will have both the means and the will to put humans onto the [Martian] surface, to go and stay,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd given the enormous diversity of human opinions and life experiences out there, I don\u2019t think they\u2019ll have a hard time finding not just willing people, but people who are sane and capable, and good crew members who will do their jobs to the best of their abilities.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Those crew members could well set up the research bases or tourist stopovers that Squyres has in mind.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut I really believe that when you start to talk about true settlement, true colonization, that requires sending a broad cross-section of humans, including ages from birth to old age,\u201d he said. \u201cTrying to support people like that, and actually have them want to be there in that environment \u2026 I just don\u2019t see it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What about terraforming Mars to make it more Earthlike?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTerraforming presupposes that you have both the technology and the wisdom to tailor the climate of an entire planet to your liking,\u201d Squyres said. \u201cOne thing we\u2019re learning on Earth right now is that climate systems are incredibly complex things. To me, I see no evidence that anybody knows what the technology is to terraform Mars. I don\u2019t see evidence that we have the wisdom to change a planet\u2019s climate to our liking. If we do, at some point in the future, I would like to terraform Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Other highlights from Squyres\u2019 talk:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Even though he\u2019s a master of robotic space missions, Squyres believes humans will be essential for Mars exploration. He said the first job will be to drill down hundreds of meters to look for liquid water and perhaps even life. The difficulties that NASA\u2019s Mars InSight lander has encountered trying to force a heat probe just a few meters into the ground illustrates how difficult such a job can be for remote-controlled robots. \u201cDrilling is hard,\u201d Squyres said.<\/li>\n<li>Squyres\u2019 experience as an aquanaut on NASA underwater training missions convinced him that the concept of an Earth-based Mission Control will have to \u201cfundamentally change\u201d to accommodate the communication delays involved in a crewed mission to Mars. He noted that he \u201cdied\u201d during a medical simulation that was conducted on the Aquarius underwater habitat, due to the simulated signal delays as well the lack of a physician on the undersea crew.<\/li>\n<li>One of Squyres\u2019 other interests is Europa, an ice-covered moon of Jupiter. Where could evidence of life be found first, Europa or Mars? \u201cA reasonable but quite possibly wrong response to your question would be that Europa\u2019s more likely, but Mars is an easier place to look,\u201d he said. NASA\u2019s Europa Clipper, a flyby mission that\u2019s due for launch in the 2020s, will help characterize the moon\u2019s icy shell and the ocean of liquid water that\u2019s thought to lie beneath. \u201cEuropa Clipper\u2019s going to make a lot of headway on that,\u201d Squyres said.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>GeekWire\u2019s Alan Boyle is the president of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, one of the organizers of the annual ScienceWriters conference.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Planetary scientist Steve Squyres, who headed the science team for NASA\u2019s Spirit and Opportunity rovers and now serves as Blue Origin\u2019s chief scientist, demonstrates how the rovers were parked on slanted slopes to soak up maximum solar energy during the Martian winter. (GeekWire Photo \/ Alan Boyle) STATE COLLEGE, Pa. \u2014 For 15 years, planetary [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[509,367,4932,4933,2723],"class_list":["post-17900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-blue-origin","tag-mars","tag-opportunity-rover","tag-sciencewriters","tag-steve-squyres"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17900"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17900\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}