Human missions to Mars should search for alien life, new report says
A major new study lays out plans for manned missions to Mars, with the search for extraterrestrial life a top priority.
A. Martin UW Photography/Getty Images
The best reason to send humans to Mars is not for courage or glory or to build colonies to protect against the existential risks of Earth. Instead, we need to answer one simple question: is there ever life on Mars?
This is the result new report released Tuesday by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, which presents an ambitious, science-driven vision of human missions to the Red Planet with the search for alien life as its guiding light.
“When our astronauts set foot on Mars, it will be one of humanity's greatest milestones,” says Dava Newman, aerospace engineer and former director MIT Media Labwho co-chaired the committee that prepared the report. “And the discovery of extant or extinct life on Mars will be a discovery that will define the next century.”
About supporting science journalism
If you enjoyed this article, please consider supporting our award-winning journalism. subscription. By purchasing a subscription, you help ensure a future of influential stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
The report attempts to bridge the gap between NASA's science and its human spaceflight program to achieve a common goal, said report co-chair Lindy Elkins-Tanton. planetary scientist who heads the Space Science Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, and NASA's Psyche Mission. “Learning to combine these different disciplines is critical to our future as an interplanetary species,” she says.
The report outlines 10 more scientific objectives beyond the main search for life and ranks four potential crewed campaigns, each consisting of three consecutive missions.
The highest ranking campaign targets not selected yeta geologically diverse 100 kilometer wide “exploration zone” rich in near-surface glacial ice where signs of past or present life can be found. In this project, astronauts will initially remain on Mars for 30 sols (Martian days). This period will then be followed by unmanned cargo delivery and finally a crewed flight of 300 sols.
Other campaigns will be a little smaller in scale, but bold nonetheless. Two of them will involve building and operating drilling rigs on Mars, and one campaign will involve drilling to depths of up to five kilometers to reach the subsurface. where potentially living liquid water could exist. The lowest rated campaign differs from the others in that it will see astronauts make a series of shorter forays to the surface for 30 sols each at three separate sites around the planet.
All campaigns propose the use of a “human-agent team” in the form of advanced robotics and software. And all of them include a “ground laboratory on Mars” for immediate study of samples, some of which will later be returned to Earth for more in-depth analysis.
Such “agents” could range from small autonomous devices to humanoid robots, says report committee member and former NASA astronaut Jim Pawelczyk, now a physiologist at Pennsylvania State University. “Their exact form will be determined by specific requirements, advances in hardware and artificial intelligence. That's why it's important to set scientific goals early; they drive subsequent technology development,” he says.
Yet despite the 240-page report's encyclopedic descriptions of each campaign, it glosses over some issues that are critical to planning future missions. For example, it does not define specific exploration areas or plan protocols to maintain the health and safety of the crew. It also doesn't suggest any preferred approach for “planetary protection“, a term referring to protection from biological cross-contamination between Earth and Mars (current planetary protection recommendations would essentially be prohibit landing the crew anywhere on Mars where liquid water is known to exist.)
Those ambiguities are unlikely to be due solely to the report's strict focus on science, according to Jim Green, NASA's former chief scientist and former head of the agency's planetary science division, who was not involved in the work. NASA's budget is a political football, subject to radical changes as presidents and congressional majorities change. The Trump administration, for example, has proposed refusal a multibillion-dollar effort led by NASA to obtain samples that have already been collected by the agency's Perseverance rover on Mars. “Due to the slowdown in the robotic Mars exploration program, we simply don't know enough about Mars to select one exploration area as originally planned,” Green says.
The report also largely avoids the question of how any of its proposals would actually be implemented. It acknowledges NASA's pre-existing “Moon to Mars Strategy,” the agency's shorthand for the mission. Artemis program returning astronauts to the lunar surface as a precursor to human travel to the Red Planet, but has no bearing on the timing of future missions to Mars and the specific types of rocketry and spacecraft needed to achieve them.
“Our frankly gargantuan task has been to decide what kind of science people should do—and do it best by people,” Newman says. “These missions will require a lot of discoveries and technological advances; if we limit ourselves to how we can do things Now, we will not develop the right campaigns for our future,” she adds, noting that the report does not attempt to outline how to do this. All from a technological point of view.
One thing is clear, Elkins-Tanton said: The Moon remains NASA's next astronautical goal, and Mars exploration remains in the future. “We're not just going to Mars tomorrow,” she says.
It's time to stand up for science
If you liked this article, I would like to ask for your support. Scientific American has been a champion of science and industry for 180 years, and now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.
I was Scientific American I have been a subscriber since I was 12, and it has helped shape my view of the world. science always educates and delights me, instills a sense of awe in front of our vast and beautiful universe. I hope it does the same for you.
If you subscribe to Scientific Americanyou help ensure our coverage focuses on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on decisions that threaten laboratories across the US; and that we support both aspiring and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.
In return you receive important news, fascinating podcastsbrilliant infographics, newsletters you can't missvideos worth watching challenging gamesand the world's best scientific articles and reporting. You can even give someone a subscription.
There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you will support us in this mission.
