Mars might be the next place humans visit but it’s not exactly the kind of place you’d want to hang out just for fun. It’s dusty, dry, and while we know there’s at least some water frozen near its poles and potentially more underground, being stranded there would end your life quite quickly. As it turns out, there are a few corners of our very own Earth that are just as desolate as the red planet, and scientists are now using one of those locations to test gadgets and other hardware that space travelers might use during a manned Mars mission.
Researchers have chosen southern Oman as their Mars testbed, using the desert bordering Saudi Arabia as a fake Martian landscape. There, scientists go to great lengths to mimic what it might be like for an astronaut working on the surface of Mars, right down to simulated communications delays as the signals travel from the red planet to Earth and back.
The “fake” astronauts live in inflatable crew quarters and have little to no contact with the outside world. They must wear space suits when walking around outside, and because this is supposed to be another planet, safety is priority number one. They get around on foot or ATVs, and they conduct research in the same way that actual Mars travelers might. – READ MORE
[give_form id=”79809″] [divider][/divider]Mars is very much en vogue right now. NASA is focused on exploring Mars, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars, and astronomers all around the world want to learn more about Earth’s nearest neighbor. The discovery earlier this month that the planet is hiding massive water ice reserves just beneath its surface could have far-reaching ramifications, possibly giving future humans on Mars easy access to water supplies. Of course, humans would need more than water to survive on Mars.
NASA on Thursday unveiled a device called Kilopower, a compact nuclear reactor capable of reliably generating power. In a guest post on Space.com, the Department of Energy’s Kilopower project lead Patrick McClure and Los Alamos National Laboratory’s chief reactor designer David Poston explained how the solution works.
“The brilliance of Kilopower is its simplicity: With few moving parts, it uses heat-pipe technology, invented at Los Alamos way back in 1963, to power a Stirling engine,” the two wrote. “Here’s how it works: The sealed tube in the heat pipe circulates a fluid around the reactor, picking up the heat and carrying it to the Stirling engine. There, the heat energy pressurizes gas to drive a piston coupled to a motor that generates electricity. Using the two devices in tandem creates a simple, reliable electric power supply that can be adapted for space applications, including human exploration and space science missions to outer planetary bodies like the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.”
The researchers have created different versions of the portable Kilopower reactor that generate different amounts of power. They range from 1 kilowatt, which they say is only enough to power a household toaster, to 10 kilowatts in size. According to McClure and Poston, about 40 kW would be needed to effectively run a habitat on Mars and generate fuel. – READ MORE
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