DR GERNOT GRÖMER
SPACE SCIENTIST
Humans could set foot on Mars in just two decades. Grömer’s team of scientists are ensuring our bodies are fit for the task
Sun-blistered rock and dirt stretch to the horizon, punctured by salt domes. In the summer, temperatures rise above 50ºc and the wind spins up blinding sandstorms. If it wasn’t for the wisps of cloud, you could mistake it for a barren, far-off planet – which is why, in February, amateur astronauts descended on the region to prepare for mankind’s journey to Mars.
Almost 46 years after the last Apollo astronaut returned from the Moon, sending humans to new worlds is again on the agenda. Nasa has announced plans for a manned Mars mission by the mid-2030s, while Elon Musk’s Spacex, one of many companies working on the goal, wants to do it by 2025. An interplanetary voyage seems no longer a case of if, but when.
Where it took Apollo 11 three days to reach the lunar surface, however, reaching the Red Planet – an average of 225,000,000km away, depending on planetary orbits – could take nine months. “It’s the biggest journey our society has ever undertaken,” says Gernot Grömer, director of the Austrian Space Forum (OEWF). “The distance between Earth and Mars is about 1,000 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon. That’s also a good measure for the complexity.”
If astronauts succeed in landing on the surface, they face an atmosphere too thin to breathe, freezing temperatures, toxic soil, lethal storms and exposure to cosmic radiation. Then they have a choice. Assuming, by some breakthrough, they were able to carry enough fuel for a return flight, they now need to either turn around immediately or wait up to 18 months for the planets to get back into range.
A group of scientists and space enthusiasts, the OEWF is one of several organisations, including Nasa, the European Space Agency and Russia’s Roscosmos, preparing for the trip using “analogues” – simulations conducted on Earth. From the red craters of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii to the sub-zero Antarctic winter and the deep waters of the Florida Keys, researchers are seeking out extreme environments all over the world to answer questions about a longduration stay on Mars. How will extended isolation in deep space affect our physical and mental health? What will we eat? And what if something goes wrong?
“We’re looking for problems,” explains Grömer. A veteran of 12 analogues, he has simulated Mars atop glaciers, in mines and
in deserts. “It’s the little details that turn into big disasters: when your water filter breaks and you don’t have a replacement part, or when the airlock refuses to close… No disaster strikes out of the blue. There’s always a history of human mistakes.”
Fit for Action
In February, the OEWF crew arrived in Dhofar for Amadee-18, the latest Mars analogue. The mission was scheduled to last four weeks, during which time six astronauts would live and work inside Kepler Station – a 2.4-tonne inflatable habitat, containing a science lab, living quarters and a gym. Stepping outside required passing through an airlock in a spacesuit. Communication with mission control in Innsbruck, Austria, was delayed by 10 minutes to mimic the time it would take a radio signal to travel through space.
Like Nasa astronauts, applicants to the OEWF’S analogues undergo a rigorous selection process. Candidates are assessed on their mental capacities and their ability to cope under pressure, as well as their physical health. There’s no age limit – Nasa sends up astronauts in their fifties – but you need “a higher level of fitness than the average Joe”, says Rochelle Velho, Amadee-18’s chief medical officer. “We look at people’s cardiovascular fitness and electrocardiograms. We test their limits,” she says.
Establishing a baseline is vital, because low gravity causes muscles to atrophy. “Mars has a third of the Earth’s gravitational pull, so your bones and muscles aren’t subject to the same impact loading,” says Velho. Nasa studies show that time in zero gravity reduces your bone-mineral density “from that of a 25-year-old to that of someone in their eighties”, says Velho. To mitigate this, astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) exercise for two hours a day, using specially designed treadmills, bikes and resistance machines. On Mars, they would also likely take bisphosphonates – drugs used to treat osteoporosis.
Each astronaut in Oman was assigned a personalised exercise programme, a mixture of weights training and lowintensity cardio on the treadmill or elliptical machine. They were also given diet plans devised by nutritionists at the University of Applied Sciences in Linz. Mars astronauts need a carefully calibrated
diet to offset deficiencies and provide the necessary protein and calories to maintain muscle. On a real mission, astronauts’ food would be freeze-dried and topped up with vitamin D and K supplements. In Oman, however, the crew was permitted fresh produce, including salad greens grown on site in Kepler’s hydroponic farm. (Most Mars scenarios involve growing food.)
For Amadee-18, the analogue astronauts comprised five men and a woman, from six nationalities. The crew included a paramedic, a meteorologist and a flight controller for Columbus, a science lab that is part of the ISS. On 8 February, they entered Kepler Station, underwent final checks and closed the airlock behind them.
Testing Grounds
The Amadee-18 crew’s time was scheduled to the minute. The astronauts were given 19 missions, including testing drones, mapping and searching for water. Outdoor experiments required leaving Kepler for extra-vehicular activities (EVAS) in the OEWF’S spacesuit simulators. The suits are made from an aluminium-coated Kevlar composite and weigh 50kg. Sensors measure the astronauts’ oxygen and carbon dioxide levels, heart rate and humidity, while cameras record their every move. The helmet contains a display that relays instructions, and astronauts can issue voice commands to the on-board computer. Just putting it on takes several hours and the help of up to five people. “It’s essentially a spacecraft that you wear,” says Grömer. “You have to respect it.”
Each simulator contains an exoskeleton of cuffs and resistance bands designed to mimic the forces that astronauts would experience while wearing a pressurised suit in space. “Imagine going jogging in a diving suit with a backpack and ski gloves on,” Grömer says. “Any movement that would be easy on Earth – bending, putting a probe in the ground – was hard in the suit,” says Iñigo Muñoz Elorza, an Amadee-18 astronaut who works at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne.
One thing the suits don’t have is a sealed oxygen supply. Instead, their ventilation fans use outside air for breathing – which presented its own challenges. “When you’re somewhere as hot as Oman, you can’t cool down,” Elorza says. “The air is hotter than your body temperature. That affects you when you’re exerting yourself continuously, wearing a 50kg suit.”
On his first EVA, Elorza was almost immediately confronted by a dust devil,
a phenomenon also common on Mars. “I didn’t panic. I was trying to remember the procedures,” says Elorza. The simulation is at its most realistic, he says, when everything seems to fall away except the whir of the ventilation and the crackle of the radio. “When you go out in the suit, you’re isolated from the outside world.”
We Have a Problem
One of the biggest risks on a Mars mission is mutiny. In December 1973, on an 84-day stay aboard the now-defunct Skylab Space Station, three astronauts grew agitated at mission control and turned off all communications with Earth for a day and spent it enjoying the view.
Analogues have not been without their own issues. In 1999, a month into a study by the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow, two Russian astronauts got into a fist fight. One female participant was sexually harassed; another quit in protest. (Rather than address the issue directly, many analogues have selected all-male crews.) A recent eight-month analogue in Hawaii was aborted after four days, when a crew member suffered an electric shock and required hospitalisation.
“Every analogue has problems,” says psychologist Tajana Lucic, who worked on Amadee-18. “You’re isolated from your family and friends. Personal space is limited. In a real mission, you also have physical stressors that can impact your psychological state. So, for many reasons, you can have social friction that escalates.”
For a long time, astronauts viewed psychologists with scepticism, partly as a result of their authority to rule them ineligible for flight. “We’re the only thing they hate more than doctors,” Lucic says, laughing. Today, all astronauts are assessed on factors such as agreeableness, resilience and ability to improvise. “We have standard social metrics called sociograms. Generally, you want a person who is more extraverted, open to other people and able to withstand stress.”
Selecting teams is even more important than selecting individuals. “You’re trying to find the right cocktail of people,” Lucic explains. Having too many leaders can lead to clashes; have too few and nothing gets done. “You’re looking for people who complement each other. For instance, it’s OK to have one person who is more empathetic and sensitive, because they can be someone to talk to.”
As with exercise, creating a baseline of astronauts’ mental faculties is crucial. One symptom of oxygen deficiency, which could indicate a hull leak, is overconfidence. “It’s called ‘Superman syndrome’. There’s a gap between what you think you can do and what you can actually do. You might think you’re fine, but you can’t write your name,” says Velho.
In Oman, scientists monitored the astronauts closely – everything from their proximity to one another to the direction of their voices – to detect conflicts brewing before they occurred. “It helps to be good at something: a magic trick, playing the guitar,” says Grömer, of the long days in the habitat. “You’re looking for someone you’d be happy to go for a beer with after work. Teamwork is as vital as oxygen.”
One Giant Leap
Amadee-18 went largely without incident. After four weeks, the astronauts left Kepler Station and returned home. The OEWF and its collaborators are now analysing the data. Meanwhile, Grömer is planning the next analogue for 2020. “Every mistake we make is one that we are preventing on a future Mars mission,” he says.
Given the challenges, many have argued that putting humans on Mars is impracticable, even unethical, and robots would be better suited to the job. “For a long time, we considered the human body, the human psyche, to be the weakest link. I disagree,” says Grömer. No robot, he says, is as adaptable as human beings working as a team. For him, it’s not going that’s unthinkable. “Mars is where we might answer the question of whether life ever arose elsewhere,” he says. “We’re the first generation to have the tech to go there. It would be a waste if we chose not to.”
The odds are in his favour. Earlier this year, Spacex launched a new rocket that could power the first Mars flights. China plans to send a lander in 2020, and has constructed a new analogue to prepare for manned missions. “I’m not sure 2025 will be the real date, but it won’t be far from that,” Elorza says. And when it finally happens, he’ll remember standing in the Dhofar desert at sunset, wearing his space suit, as the sand turned red. “From the hill, I could see the habitat and the sunset on the other side. It was beautiful,” he says. “I thought: someday, somebody will look at a similar view – but from Mars.”