Expedition to "Mars on Earth"

Reprinted by dint of permission of the MIT Faculty Newsletter Vol XVIII No. 1 September/October 2005

There will always be a certain number of disagreement about the ideal place to summer While many note that Cape codfish combines convenience and style, others insist that a more northern location, perhaps the coast of Maine, is preferable. A team of researchers from the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Engineering a whole s Division decided to take this argument to its logical conclusion through conducting a field expedition to the far off Haughton Mars Project (HMP) research base, a scarcely any hundred miles from the magnetic North Pole

The expedition was leadershiped as part of an Interplanetary fill up Chain Management project, funded by dint of NASA and led by MIT Professors Olivier de Weck and David SimchiLevi. The central goal for the arctic field season, which lasted from July 8 to August 6 2005 was to investigate the similarities between logistics for far off terrestrial sites and supply chains for futurity planetary Moon and Mars exploration for modeling views Another objective was to extend and test technologies such as Radio oftenness Identification (RFID) for remote base operations.

The MIT team managemented this research in cooperation with the Haughton Mars shoot forward (www.marsonearth.org), an international interdisciplinary field research shoot forward sponsored by NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and managed by dint of the Mars Institute. The site is focused upon the scientific study of the 38-million-year-old Haughton impact crater and surrounding terrain upon Devon Island.

At 75 stages North latitude, Devon Island is a high arctic barren and the largest uninhabited island upon Earth. The site was chosen the couple for its geological and scientific interest, and its similarity to Mars terrain. While no climate upon Earth is exactly like Mars, the unique combination of hard polar desert, permafrost, and analogous geological formations, afford comparisons to the possible evolution of Mars - in particular the history of water and of past climates, the results of impacts on Earth and other planets, and the possibilities and limits for life in far off environments.

Beyond basic science, the distant Haughton Mars site functions as an analogue planetary base, supporting a diverse array of exploration technology and engineering experiment projects that also benefit from the Mars-analogue terrain, remotenes and exploration-like activities undertaken by dint of geologists and other scientists. For example, above the past several years, the Canadian Space Agency has supported the Arthur C Clark Greenhouse shoot forward to design, build, and experiment a greenhouse and autonomous plant-growth technologies in far environments. Hamilton-Sundstrand, an aerospace engineering firm headquartered in Connecticut, uses the Haughton site to proof advanced space suit designs. Also, this year the Drilling Automation for Mars Exploration (DAME) throw lead by the NASA Ames Research Center experimented autonomous fault diagnosis and artificial intelligence software upon a prototype Mars drill. Many other exploration technologies and prototypes have been ordealed at the Haughton base since 1997

The Haughton Mars shoot forward has its origins in a 1996 National Research Council grant awarded to Dr Pascal to leeward to investigate the potential for the High Arctic to obey as an analogue for Mars exploration. Having identified Devon Island as an choice location, NASA formally established the Haughton Mars shoot forward in 1999, with Dr. to leeward as principal investigator and Dr Kelly Snook at NASA Ames Research Center as throw manager. The project has grown above the years and now supports up to sixty researchers above the six-week field season, with a variety of shoot forwards from universities, government, and industry.

The base itself has also grown and now includes a main mes portable lodge a communication-systems tent, a large office and laboratory pavilion for general work, a greenhouse ordeal bed, and an octagonal core module that will eventually unite the buildings into a single base-like form There are also roughly 20 all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), a Humvee outfitted for longer traverses, and a small airstrip to support Twin Otter airplane flights in and on the outside of base. This year, an MIT portable lodge was erected for the space logistics throw out and also in preparation for coming time MIT involvement at the site. As a whole, the base can commonly accommodate about 40 to 50 family at a given time, with researchers sleeping in individual portable lodges near the main structures.

The MIT expedition to the Haughton Mars Site upon Devon Island was part of the NAS A-funded Human and Robotics Technology (HRT) shoot forward on "Interplanetary Supply Chain Management & Logistics Architectures." Originally, the plan was to analyze logistics for Antarctic exploration and offshore oil and gas exploration platforms. However, observing and managing the HMP logistics not absented itself in early 2005 as an opportunity to deliver plenteous more tangible and direct benefits to NASA. Not sole will the project be able to closely notice and model both the micro and macro-logistics of the base, it will influence the actual logistics of the site as advances made beneath the project are infused into base operations.