Extreme Substitutes: Finding the Moon and Mars on Earth

The best way to learn is through experience, says SAIC's Stephen J. Hoffman, Ph.D., an aerospace engineer and mission analyst. But what if the best place to get experience is nearly 240,000 miles away from our planet? You find the next best location on Earth.

Extraterrestrial Expeditions Begin with Analog Missions

Since 1988, SAIC has been helping NASA analyze missions and technologies for the future exploration of space by human crews. As part of SAIC's support for the NASA Constellation Program Office (and its predecessors), SAIC helps determine technologies, systems, and procedures to test for human space missions, where the most useful test results can be obtained — in a laboratory, through a simulation, or in the field — and participates in the planning and operation of analog missions.

An analog mission centers on activity that would be performed on an extraterrestrial expedition and is performed in an environment similar to the environment to be explored — an analogous environment. The missions are used to reduce the risks and costs and maximize the productivity of planetary exploration.

Hoffman, manager of SAIC's Space Science & Systems Engineering division, explains, "Analog missions support system development and integration, from initial concept testing and hardware testing to crew training."

Dean Eppler, Ph.D., an SAIC senior scientist, says, "Analog missions force us to deal with real environments and the real events that can happen in the real environment that often don't happen in the lab. Some things you must do in the field. The direct outcome of doing these test lets you know you can do x and can't do y."

The results from these missions are helping NASA achieve the goals set forth in the Vision for Space Exploration (VSE), announced by President Bush in 2004, which calls for a return to the Moon and a human expedition to Mars. Hoffman says, "Lunar experience lowers the risk of a Mars mission. Mars is still the goal."

Working on Other Worlds Begins Beneath the Waves

Researchers float through their tasks, taking soil samples and working on equipment — not on the Moon, but beneath the waves in the clear waters near Key Largo, Fla. Underwater activities simulate activities in no-gravity and low-gravity environments. Space suit and portable life support system backpack designs are tested in this environment, lunar geological exploration tasks are evaluated and data is collected on work efficiency.

Driving on the Moon Begins in a Crater Field in Arizona

Men in space suits drive a lunar rover over volcanic plains and carry out extravehicular activity (EVA) operations in a pockmarked landscape. Only the blue sky and the pine trees in the distance are reminders that they are driving in the Cinder Lake Crater Field outside of Flagstaff, Ariz.

Man-made craters at the Cinder Lake site make the area resemble the region where the Apollo 11 lunar module landed. The site was originally used to train Apollo astronauts. Now, the area is used for analog missions that test systems and procedures in preparation for a return to the Moon by 2020.

Eppler has been to Cinder Lake many times as the prime space suit test subject from 1996 through 2006 (with a year off in 2001). In addition to testing suit modifications, it's necessary to determine how best to do EVA while wearing the suit.

"Nine out of 10 people who try the suit on never want to get into it again," says Eppler. If the weight of the 210-pound suit is not enough to dissuade would-be testers, there also is the fact that test subjects must remain aware of their air supply in the hermetically sealed suit.

Updated, more maneuverable versions of the lunar rover vehicle are also tested at Cinder Lake, and evaluations are made on how the design of both suit and rover can best work together.

The 2007 Cinder Lake mission demonstrated operation concepts for assembling a lunar outpost, acquired data on human-robot interaction on operational tasks, and demonstrated technologies for EVA. Analog missions evaluate, test and develop commercially available technologies as well as new technologies. Technologies developed for space exploration have yielded advances in fields ranging from medicine and electronics to weather forecasting.

Housekeeping in Alien Outposts Starts in Antarctica

Gale force winds buffet a frigid landscape where a habitat is being set up. But this is not a lunar outpost or a base camp on Mars; it is a test habitat in Antarctica. In 2003, Eppler lived for five weeks on the Antarctic polar plateau in a two-person, canvas tent with 100 square feet of floor space. In 2007, Hoffman played a key role in establishing an analog mission in Antarctica that set up more livable quarters: a proof-of-concept habitat that looks like an inflatable Quonset hut.

The test habitat is lightweight, prefabricated, and easy to transport and set up. The inside of the inflated hut has an 8-foot high ceiling and 384 square feet of floor space. It uses a fabric that does not rip and is designed to provide insulation and radiation protection. Its design will be tested during its 13-month deployment at Antarctica's McMurdo Station.

The test habitat may provide superior accommodations in harsh environments on Earth. It also may lead to technologies and habitat designs that provide astronauts with a home and workplace on the surface of the Moon or Mars.

A Walk on Mars Begins With a Trek at the Top of the World

To prepare for a walk on Mars, a small group of men cross a vast, barren plain on the largest uninhabited island on Earth: Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The Haughton impact crater, caused by an ancient meteorite, marks this rocky, polar desert, home to the Haughton-Mars Project, where lunar as well as Mars analog missions are carried out.

Hoffman has had 10 years of experience with analog missions on Devon Island, including a 2003 long-distance traverse across the island to test navigation concepts astronauts might use on the Martian surface. Finding the best ways to move people and equipment over alien terrain must be determined, because navigating on Mars will have to be done without benefit of compasses or Global Positioning System (GPS) technology. (Although Mars has patches of magnetized surface rock, it does not have an Earth-like magnetic field or a GPS satellite system.)

Hoffman was part of a NASA-sponsored research group tasked with moving a modified AM General Corporation's Humvee® rover across almost 100 kilometers of Devon Island. The trip, including an unanticipated 130-kilometer detour due to an unMartian-like swollen river, demonstrated, among other things, that a primary route can be planned and new routes selected in the field, using only air photos and topographic maps.

Recent analog activities on Devon Island included experiments using robots for systematic surveys and studying some of the physical effects on humans as they walk over difficult terrain.

Finding Life on Other Worlds May Begin Above the Arctic Circle

A reconnaissance team explores an archipelago of islands covered in rugged mountains, snowfields and glaciers, approximately 700 miles from the North Pole. The site is bitterly cold, remote, rocky, and has very little vegetation — but is it an analog site?

An analog site must meet a variety of criteria. Can certain analog activities involving hardware or procedures be done at the prospective site and nowhere else? Can site activities be supported at this location? How easy — and costly — is it to travel to and from the site?

In August 2007, Eppler, a geologist, was a member of the expedition doing reconnaissance of a potential Mars analog environment for space suit testing and geologic training in the Norwegian territory of Svalbard. The main island of Svalbard, housing most of the territory's 2,100 people, is the northernmost permanently inhabited area on the planet.

The reconnaissance team traveled on an icebreaker research vessel for two weeks, investigating the site. In addition to being an expedient way to travel among Svalbard's islands, the ship helped the team avoid contact with Svalbard's large population of polar bears.

The team concluded that Svalbard's unique geology and its many sites with morphology similar to the Martian surface could provide an excellent training ground for geologic sciences and exploring harsh terrain. It also may be evaluated for activities related to the search for life on other planets.

On Mars, that search may include looking for endoliths, organisms such as bacteria that live inside rock or in the pores between mineral grains. The sensitive instruments used to detect biological signals from endoliths can pick up faint biological signals that leak from space suit joints and cause a false positive reading.

Svalbard may someday provide a site for tests to characterize and manage the leakage of biological signals from space suits. Preventing leakage is also important for protecting indigenous or imported life on other planets from human cells, latent viruses and other microbes. (It is estimated that every human body carries a trillion microbes.)

The Adventure Begins Three Days Away

Analog missions help prepare for human missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond, but Hoffman says, "Even accounting for as many possibilities as possible, there will still be some uncertainty."

Although Hoffman and Eppler are dedicated to reducing those uncertainties through SAIC's support for analog missions, both men are eager for the actual off-world adventure to begin. Like a mantra, they keep repeating, "The Moon is only three days away."

"Our work isn't about the journey," Eppler says, "we want to get to the destination; we want the data."

"Analog missions are just steps along the road," says Hoffman. "Using the results of these activities will be the most satisfying."