Research & Development

Mars yard at SAM model by Bryan Versteeg | spacehabs.com

In 2023 Kai invited Dr. Jim Bell to visit SAM. Dr. Bell is a world renowned planetary geologist at Arizona State University, School of Earth and Space Exploration, and designer of the ‘Mastcam’ cameras for the Mars rovers Curiosity and Perseverance. They reviewed the then small Mars yard “sand box” filled with crushed basalt, and discussed the ultimate expansion to a 2600 sq-ft facility complete with 10-12 foot high crater walls.

Together they considered three possibilities:

a) Take a single volcanic or impact crater on Mars and shrink it down to something that would fit within 2600 sq-ft. The challenge would be that we’d lose the detail of the features by the very function of miniaturization; or

b) Take a life-size feature such as a cliff band or gully bottom on Mars and recreate it, centimeter for centimeter adjacent to SAM. While this would give visiting crew members a very realistic EVA experience, the shelf-life for our Mars yard would be limited to the relatively narrow set of geologic features in a few hundred square meters; or

c) Build an amalgamation of features taken from various sites on Mars. This final approach results is a bit of a Frankenstein monster but is far more interesting, has a greater shelf-life, and can be modified in the future without geologic ramification.

APRIL 20, 2024
d) With the transition from an intended rebar, lath, and concrete construction medium to carved foam and shotcrete, it became possible to fabricate a realistic assembly of diverse features on Mars in the confines of a single space, and in so doing, build a world in which the represented geological layers tell a nearly complete story of millions of years of construction and erosion. Learn more …

In preparation for the arrival of Red Hen Industries and their Hollywood set construction crews, Kai once again reached out to renowned space architecture visionary Bryan Versteeg (top image) to generate a rough 3D model as a means to visualize the initial parameters of this massive undertaking.

In parallel, ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration undergraduate Tasha Coelho assembled a document that explores the varied types of features that might be represented in the SAM Mars yard geology, building on the initial photographs captured by Matthias Beach in the fall of 2023 with her own deep dive into the NASA and ASU image archives.

The features considered include: anthropogenic features, concretions and buried pebbles, conglomerates, gullies and talus slopes horizontal striations and outcrops, linear color variations, mud cracks, recurring slope lineae ripples, and veins and ventricals.

More than 100 images from the Curiosity Mars rover were studied, two dozen printed and laminated as initial guides for the Red Hen crew.

Concretions

• Clumps of minerals formed when water soaked the rock long ago
• Resistant to erosion
• Some are close to being fully revealed
• Example: Martian Blueberries (Hematite, an iron mineral). These are also found in Utah’s petrified sand dunes. They become superficial (meaning, separate from the stone in which they formed) as surrounding sandstone/mudstone erodes away. These were discovered by Opportunity the same day it landed.

Conglomerates

• Rounded pebbles bound together with varying degrees of round
• Nearby loose pebbles that have dropped out of the conglomerate
• Evidence for fast flowing water; needed to mobilize and round heavier rocks

Horizontal striations

• Buried sand dunes
• Fine grain
• Cross-bedding indicating different flows of water OR whole rock unit moved
• Horizontal Striations
• Fracturing

Veins

• Fluid-rock interactions
• Water carrying minerals and filling cracks in rocks
• More resistant to erosion compared to surrounding rock
• Dark base colors with light features (calcium sulfate aka gypsum}

Ventifacts

• Wind carved rocks
• Wind blown grains erode and smooth surfaces, similar to a sand blaster
• Resulting rock can show prevailing wind directions (learn more)

Recurring Slope Lineae

• From orbit these features appear to be meters wide and kilometers long; might also be seen on smaller scales
• Different theories for formation:
  – CO2 sublimation
  – Seasonal heating melting sub-surface briny water
  – Hydrated clays
  – Dry landslides

Anthropogenic features

• From rovers/humans attempting to learn what lies beneath the surface
• Educational opportunity
• Reveals unoxidized layer

Mud Cracks

• Floor features, or on top of flat rocks

Subsurface Water / CO₂ Ice

• Newly revealed subsurface ice imaged by Phoenix and HiRISE
• Have only been observed on the ground, not on vertical outcrops (need to verify)

Gullies + Talus slopes
These are not applicable to the size and scale of the SAM Mars yard.

Water (or CO₂) ice in cold traps
These can only be imaged from orbit, as with Korolev crater.

Written by Sean Gellenbeck, PhD

Initiated in mid January, the new, experimental hydroponics rack system was set in motion by SAM team members Sean Gellenbeck and Luna Powell. This upgrade is designed to be more effective and efficient in plant production, with intent to be fully computer monitored, controlled, and automated in the final design.

This single rack solution is a prototype built for use by (Hey! Is that? Could it be James Burk, Executive Director of the Mars Society helping carry in a shipment of new raceways!?)

To avoid these challenges, the redesigned system uses a different method called Nutrient Film Technique, or NFT. In NFT, a thin film of the nutrient solution is run through enclosed channels containing the plant root zones. With the roots exposed to the nutrient solution the plant can take up the nutrients and water they need. And the enclosed channels work to prevent the roots from drying out. This has the added benefit of reducing algae growth as the nutrient solution is now no longer exposed to light. As compared to Ebb and Flood the NFT design, less water is moved through the system at any one time. This results in a smaller pump and less complex structure to support the weight of the water above.

To create the new system, Sean and Luna made use of the metal support structure from the previous design. The flood trays were removed and replaced with 4 NFT channels running in parallel (side by side). The PVC channels are a standard within the hydroponics industry and are used in commercial applications. The channels were cut to size and sealed to prevent leaks onto other components. As with the original design, there are three levels in the NFT setup and the nutrient solution flows from one level to the next by gravity. However, where the previous design moved water simultaneously to all three levels, this new design carries water to the highest tray only, with gravity bringing the water to the lower two. In total, the system has 4 NFT channels flowing in parallel that connect to another set of channels on the second shelf (in series), followed by a third level of channels. The nutrient solution is pumped to the top set of channels and is split across all four channels before flowing from one level to the next. Finally, the draining solution returns to the main nutrient tank which is sized to reduce the need for crew interaction and allows for future development and system expansion.

In total, the new SAM NFT hydroponics rack has space for 78 plants. Thanks to our Jason at Biosphere 2, our team was able to quickly prepare the system with 4 species of lettuce, kale, collared greens, and a variety of herbs for the Imagination 1 crew to use during their mission.

After the Imagination 1 mission, development of the SAM hydroponics system will continue with refining the current design, duplicating it across four racks, and eventually building an automated control system to remove the need for manual crew intervention for pH and EC levels (electrical conductivity to measure of the nutrient level in solution). While much larger systems will be a part of the SAM ECLSS in the future, we expect to maintain this stand as a resource for crew experiments and education.

The following was written by Dr. Lawrence Kuznetz:

No spacesuit to date or in the planning stage has made mitigating the forward and backward spread of potential pathogens to and from planet Earth a priority. Doing so isn’t easy. But as JFK famously said, “We do this things not because they are easy but because they are hard, and that brings out the best of us.” Which brings us to the “MarsSuit” and the MQS (Mobile Quarantine Suit), the topic of this email.

Stopping pathogen spread for the Artemis EMU was never a priority since the Apollo Program’s quarantine procedures (lunar receiving lab, etc.) found none and deemed protection unnecessary. Mars is a different story. Human missions to Mars will encounter a far more likely chance of pathogen exposure than the lunar surface.

It was for this reason that I chose Spacesuits and Life Support Systems for the Exploration of Mars as the topic of my NRC Post-doc at NASA-ARC, and followed that with a series of courses, conferences, related projects at NASA. The resulting technical outcome was using the Martian atmosphere for torso pressurization, thus enabling mass savings, puncture protection, and other radically different features. The concept maturation went on for decades as described in a plethora of reports, studies and presentations.

In the midst of the pandemic, everything changed. A mind-bending confluence of events involving a cruise ship entrepreneur and a PhD hot air balloon-jumping pressure suit designer (Dr. Cameron Smith) led to seed funding and prototype fabrication. The first “MarsSuit” prototype and a higher pressure rev 2 version verified the radically different concept of operations in 2022. It became abundantly clear that the same technology embodied in the MarsSuit’s planetary protection feature could also be migrated to a Mobile Quarantine Suit (MQS) capable of mitigating future and more serious pandemics on Earth by providing:

• Barriers to pathogen entry or exit (BEBE)
• Face to face exposure elimination (FFEE)
• Cooling fog-free airflow
• Ease of doffing and donning (2 minutes or less)
• Lightweight comfort (less than 2 lbs)
• Reusability (as opposed to single use PPE)
• Rapid Disinfection ability
• Redundant changeable and evolvable filters
• Redundant ventilators
• Cost effectiveness (projected <$200 / year vs >$3500 PPE / year)
• Far greater protection than mask mandates

For more information, visit: Planetaryprotek.com

Systems architect and administrator Christopher Murtagh is developing the server that will block ports for applications that simply could not work on the Moon or Mars (e.g. web, Instagram, Twitter) due to the inherent light travel-time delay, and manage the unique SAM email addresses each team member will use, to which they will have forwarded their personal or work email prior to entering SAM. This is due to the fact that we cannot capture, store, and then release Gmail, Yahoo, or any other email but can introduce a time delay on a server that we control.

Wait. Did you say there is no internet on the Moon or Mars?! But how will I post to Instagram when I am take that first, bold step for all of human kind? How will I tell the world what I ate for breakfast? Where will I post the dozens of selfies my fans have been waiting for?! Surely, there is a way!

When Mars is near its closest point to the sun (perihelion) and Earth is at its farthest (aphelion), as the two planets were in 2003, there is 34.8 million miles (56 million km) between them. Earth and Mars are farthest apart when both are at their farthest from the sun, and at opposite sides of our host star, up to 250 million miles (401 million km) apart. SAM management will program the respective delay for each mission, from ~1.3 seconds for the Moon to 3 minutes one-way to Mars at its closest position and ~20 minutes one-way at its maximum.

While web (HTTP) and file transfers (FTP) have their own dedicated protocol, they all share something in common — the ability to send large files in smaller pieces, or packets. And with each of these packets is a checksum, a means of making certain that the packets arrived complete, without corruption due to a poor connection or cosmic ray strike, and ideally without having been hacked along the way. This means that each packet is prepared, and a mathematical value (checksum) assigned to the packet that represents the complete, unaltered data. When it is received, the checksum is compared to the contents of the packet, a response is generated and sent to the origin, and the next packet is sent. This is true for live video streaming, YouTube downloads, Instagram and Facebook posts, and direct file transfers from your computer to Google Drive or Dropbox, etc.

There are hundreds or thousands of packets sent every second, and if any one of these is stalled, even for a small fraction of a second, the entire system stalls too. The packets must be sent and received in order, or the photo or video gets completely scrambled (which we’ve all experienced). Therefore, even the relatively short distance to the Moon (~1.3 seconds) is too great a delay for one, let alone tens of millions of packets. And to Mars? Forget it. Under the current web protocol, there is simply no way.

So how did the Apollo astronauts send their live video broadcast? Analog radio signals that carried the video data were sent from their base to receiving antennae on Earth, and then rebroadcast to the world. Today, very few of these TV radio stations remain. Radio stations continue to broadcast analog signals with digital counterparts to improve the quality and provide information about the stations, newscast, or song.

“Broadcast” literally means “casting to the wide world” without concern for the receiving end. There is no means to guarantee that the information arrived safely. It’s just thrown out there, clear channel or encrypted, it’s a one-way delivery.

With our modern digital communications, your mobile phone or computer is conducting a private, secure, point-to-point dialog with a receiving station, and every packet MUST be accounted for, or the system stalls.

So how will we send data from the Moon or Mars?

Stay tuned …

(left to right) Anastasia Stepanova, Trent Tresch, Bindhu Oommen, Luna Powell, Atila Meszaros, Sean Gellenbeck, Kai Staats, and Colleen Cooley with Dr. Gene Giacomelli via the magic box. Jas Purewal of the Analog Astronaut Conference, Dr. Cameron Smith of Pacific Spaceflight, and Meridith Greythorne of the SIMOC team attended remotely.

Members of both the SIMOC and SAM teams met for a three days summit to design and develop the SAM visiting team experience. On Thursday, December 15 co-founder of CHaSE, the Center for Human Space Exploration at the Biosphere 2 Trent Tresch lead team members through the use of pressure suits and a crash course in the history of human space travel.

On Friday, December 16 the team met in the University of Arizona Center for Innovation (UACI) room at Biosphere 2 to develop a core philosophy around how visiting teams will be received and what they will take away from their experience at SAM. This effort was given foundation in an opening “safe space” visualization and discussion lead by Director of Research for SAM Kai Staats, followed by open discussion, ideation, and development of critical components of the SAM experience. Just after lunch the entire team participated in a pressure test of SAM, the first following the completion of the third pressure door by Nathan Schmit that very morning. Ezio Melotti, lead developer of SIMOC gave a demonstration of the latest version of SIMOC Live with real-time carbon dioxide, oxygen, temperature, relative humidity, and VOCs sensors, both Vernier and Adafruit products.

On Saturday, December 17 the team met for a final five hours to discuss the logistics for receiving SAM research teams to the Biosphere 2: training in conflict resolution, use of the SAM facilities, communication protocol and mission control, time in SAM, exit and debrief. The summit was captured in hand written notes and transcribed audio, and will be encoded into a comprehensive user guide for both the SAM team and visitors to this unique research facility in early 2023.

Notes and sketches were principally captured on a single roll of construction paper that stretched the length of the conference table, with pens, markers, and Crayons employed to express thoughts and capture ideas.

Joaquin, Grace, Kennith, Brianna, and Will of the UA Engineering Capstone team met with Trent Tresch at SAM on Saturday, April 9 to capture baseline performance data before the test of their own swing-bed CO2 scrubber design and scale, working prototype.

Trent lead the team in the effort to established a small, fixed volume of space in which both “the Paragon CO2 scrubber prototype designed for NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation System (COTS) program and the NASA-funded team’s prototype will be tested for their comparative ability to draw down CO2 from a given level over the period of 1 hour. The team employed a CO2 gas canister and delivery system, sealed tent, and three Vernier brand CO2 / relative humidity / temperature sensor (the later two variables used to internally calibrate for CO2).

This structure will remain in the SAM Test Module until the team can test their own design and then deliver the findings to NASA.

We are pleased to welcome Brianna Otero, Grace Halferty, Joaquin Pesqueira, Kenneth Werrell, William Fowler to the SAM team for the next nine months. They will be working with Kai Staats, Trent Tresch, and John Adams at Biosphere 2 and Ara Arabyan and Douglas May of the University of Arizona to build a fully functional, scaled swing-bed CO2 scrubber. This project is funded by NASA through the M2M X-Hab Challenge.

Construction of the half acre SAM Mars Yard begins with the removal of five original greenhouse structures used in the late 1980s to raise the plants ultimately placed inside of Biosphere 2. Laura Bryant and her team are removing the structures to be reused at her facility in Patagonia, Arizona where she specializes in organic foods for people with multiple sclerosis.

Once fully removed (it’s a big job!) our team will sculpt a first-draft layout with simple, earthen craters and simulated stream beds. Stay tuned!