The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Program is funding cutting-edge work that is testing the viability of using ecosystem-building pioneer organisms to churn out oxygen by using Martian regolith.
Taming the brutal environment of Mars for future human explorers to survive and thrive there may demand a touch of “ecopoiesis” – the creation of an ecosystem able to support life.
The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program is funding cutting-edge work by Eugene Boland, chief scientist at Techshot Inc. of Greenville, Indiana. The scientist has been busy working in the firm’s “Mars room,” which houses a test chamber capable of simulating the Red Planet’s atmospheric pressure, day-night temperature changes, and the solar radiation that cascades upon the planet’s surface.
Inside the Mars room, Boland and his team are testing the viability of using ecosystem-building pioneer organisms to churn out oxygen by using Martian regolith. Some organisms within the test bed experiment planted on the Red Planet also could remove nitrogen from the Martian soil.
“This is a possible way to support a human mission to Mars, producing oxygen without having to send heavy gas canisters,” Boland said. “Let’s send microbes and let them do the heavy lifting for us.”
Ultimately, biodomes on Mars that enclose ecopoiesis-provided oxygen through bacterial or algae-driven conversion systems might dot the Red Planet, housing expeditionary teams, Boland suggests.
But first things first.
Selected organisms
Boland and his colleagues envision their test bed gear carried aboard a future Mars rover. At carefully selected sites, the small container-like devices would be augured into the ground, planted just a few inches in depth. Then the selected Earth organisms — extremophiles like certain cyanobacteria – would interact with the Mars soil that has been captured within the container.
Yet another possible ingredient extracted from the Martian soil is liquid water, in the form of subterranean ice.
Boland says that NASA’s Curiosity rover now wheeling about on Mars has shown the pressure and temperature on the planet “flirts at the idea” that liquid water may be possible on that distant world.
Biological solution
In a form of “huff and puff” science, the sensor-laden container would detect the presence or absence of a metabolic product — like oxygen — reporting the find back to Earth via a Mars-orbiting relay satellite.
Boland adds that great care would be taken to craft the container to seal tightly, thereby preventing the Earthly organisms from being exposed to the Martian atmosphere.
The NIAC-funded work is dedicated to opening the door to a biological solution to shipping cylinders of breathable air to Mars at great expense, Boland says. It is another alternative to a known problem of oxygen consumption for the human explorers NASA plans to send to Mars, he adds.
“I’m a biologist and an engineer. So I want to put those two things together to make a useful tool,” Boland concludes.
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3 Comments
If you find this topic the least bit interesting, read the Mars Trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars) by Kim Stanley Robinson. Great stuff.
If they manage to create an atmosphere on Mars, how could it be maintained? My understanding is that Mars’ magnetic field is too weak to prevent its atmosphere from being stripped away by the solar wind. Does anyone know if this is a valid point?
The word “terraforming” comes to mind…