[Editors] MIT students living on 'Mars' via Utah

[Elizabeth Thomson]

MIT News Office
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room 11-400
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA  02139-4307
Phone: 617-253-2700
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www

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MIT students living on 'Mars' via Utah
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For Immediate Release
TUESDAY, FEB. 26, 2008
Contact: Elizabeth A. Thomson, MIT News Office -- Phone: 617-258-5402 
-- Email: thomson at mit.edu

EDITORS/WRITERS: MIT's Phillip Cunio is available to answer 
questions, via e-mail, from the Mars Society Desert Research Station. 
You can also read his blog and see a live web cam of the facility at 
the urls in the story below.


CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Last week, two MIT students began living, working 
and communicating with the outside world as if they were on a mission 
to Mars. Whenever they go outside their small, round habitat where 
eight people are spending a two-week "mission," they don spacesuits 
and pass through an airlock. When they send e-mail, it takes 20 
minutes before the recipient can see it-the time it takes for radio 
waves to travel to and from the red planet.

They're not really on Mars, of course-human missions there are not 
yet even in NASA's long-term schedule and are not expected to take 
place for at least two decades. So, in order to begin understanding 
the logistical, mechanical, scientific and psychological issues that 
a real crew of Mars explorers will someday face, teams have been 
practicing the details of Mars exploration in several Mars-base 
simulators in some of Earth's most Mars-like places. The most heavily 
used simulation is the Mars Society Desert Research Station, near 
Hanksville, Utah, which was built in 2002 by the Mars Society.

Engineering graduate students Zahra Khan and Phillip Cunio, from the 
Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, began their stay at the 
Utah facility on Sunday, Feb. 17. Cunio is working on a project to 
develop a "smart" carrier to be used for research fieldwork in remote 
expeditions such as planetary exploration. The footlocker-sized 
container and its contents are fitted with radio-frequency ID tags, 
so that it constantly keeps track of its contents and can alert 
people if supplies are about to run out or if an item has been 
misplaced. Running out of supplies is not just an inconvenience-on a 
faraway planetary surface it could be a life-or-death issue.

Khan's job was concentrating on the logistics of making exploratory 
trips through the desert to carry out geological and biological 
research. The team uses all-terrain vehicles to travel around while 
wearing their simulated spacesuits and then takes soil samples and 
conducts other tests at various locations. Halfway through the 
planned two-week mission, Khan cut her stay short when she was 
unexpectedly called to Amsterdam for a job interview with the 
European Space Agency.

Although part of the mission's purpose is to find out about practical 
issues in working in difficult circumstances, the research itself is 
also very real. They have been looking for organisms that live in the 
hostile, dry and salty desert environment, both to develop techniques 
for conducting such biological research and to learn about how 
organisms survive in these somewhat Mars-like conditions.

Both Khan and Cunio would like to be involved in real Mars missions 
someday. Khan's research is on entry, descent and landing systems for 
human missions to Mars. These will require much gentler, 
more-controlled descents than past missions, such as the Mars rovers 
that hit the ground at high speed shielded by airbags and then 
bounced for several minutes before coming to a stop.

Khan says she would like to go to Mars herself, but thinks that with 
the slow progress of NASA's plans in that direction, "the odds may 
not be very good. I think it would be a good idea to send younger 
people," and by the time such missions take place that may leave her 
out.

"I'm an advocate of one-way trips to Mars," she says, because the 
logistics of such trips would be far easier without the requirement 
for all the fuel needed for a return. For a given spacecraft, she 
says, you could send six people on a two-way mission or 24 people for 
a one-way trip. "If you're going to go there, you might as well not 
waste the resources."

Cunio's research studies the design of self-sustaining life-support 
systems for Mars colonists, as well as for missions to the moon or 
other destinations. "We're studying the commonalities in life support 
and environmental control systems," he says, so that planners don't 
have to start from scratch in planning missions to different places. 
"We want to minimize the development costs and risks."

Anyone interested in following the progress of the Mars-like mission 
can observe the team in action by way of a set of web cams that 
display live images inside and outside the habitat, at 
www.freemars.org/mdrscam. Detailed daily reports on their activities 
can be found online at www.marssociety.com/mdrs/fs07/crew67 (click on 
"daily crew reports").

Cunio is also blogging about his experiences during the mission, 
mainly as a way of helping to inspire younger students to get 
interested in space exploration. His blog is at 
exepsilonmars.blogspot.com. Cunio has made contact with several 
schools around the United States and Canada, and will participate in 
real-time question-and-answer sessions with some of the classes 
during the mission.

--END--

Written by David Chandler, MIT News Office