Space Scientist Says AI Essential For Successful Moon & Mars Missions
Beyond authoring lots of books and articles about a great variety of other topics, most of my real day job as founding professor at the University of Houston‘s Sasakawa International Center of Space Architecture is spent figuring out and teaching ways to deliver humans to the Moon and Mars, house and support them on the surfaces, and safely return them
Wherein rocket science is vitally important, it is but one of very numerous interdependent technical specialties also including diverse fields of medicine, systems engineering, automation logic, and advanced robotics.
As lunar and Mars exploration and development programs push these scientific, technological, and human adaptation challenges far beyond previous boundaries, artificial intelligence will most certainly be a crucial enablement.
For starters, the distances to be spanned to deliver lots of big cargo including habitats and surface equipment are vast compared with anything undertaken before.
Imagine for example that if our planet Earth is visualized scaled as a grapefruit, the International Space Station orbits at an altitude about the thickness of its outer skin layer.
By comparison, the Moon which humans very briefly visited a little over a half-century ago is much farther – about a quarter of a million miles requiring a three-day round trip each way.
Transporting living accommodations capable of supporting even tiny temporary lunar surface outposts – much less permanently occupied human industrial settlements supported by substantial electrical power systems – constitutes a whole new AI-enhanced and enabled delivery and infrastructure development paradigm.
Small crews and severely cold & rough terrain conditions in the lunar south pole region targeted for NASA occupancy will place high reliance upon AI-monitored and controlled telerobotic and fully automated robotic systems for all construction and assembly procedures.
Add to this entirely AI-dependent operations of surface water scavenging rovers and transport vessels to support local consumption and as a proposed longer-future-term rocket fuel source.
Mars, about 34 million miles away – 90 times farther than the Moon – extends those cargo transport and human support requirements to spectacular scales. Optimum Earth-Mars orbital alignment occurring at 2.7-year intervals imposes crew transfer periods of roughly nine months each way getting there and back.
Once there it requires spending at least a year and a half on the surface before leaving.
Those long travel and surface periods will impose unavoidable deleterious health conditions, risks, and emergencies requiring best possible prevention and response preparations under extremely limited habitat equipment volume and mass allowances.
Such limitations are set by spacecraft launch, orbital transfer and landing capacities.
Here, AI-supported telemedicine including remote diagnostics and telerobotic responses must substitute in real-time for many routine and emergency services accomplished by Earth-based facilities we take for granted.
Lengthy orbital transit periods under weightless conditions will inevitably cause crews to lose muscle mass (including cardiovascular heart muscle weakening) along with reduced bone density to increase fracture risks.
Long duration partial gravity conditions on Mars (38 percent of Earth’s) will take an additional toll on crew muscle deconditioning that impairs crew abilities to undertake strenuous tasks such as surface construction-related operations.
As with the Moon, AI and its networks of robotic partners must perform all heavy-lifting activities, with Mars even more dependent on intelligent systems for autonomous management of overall base site control functions due to two-way Earth-Mars communication delays ranging from six to 44 minutes.
Ways to shield crews from highly energetic galactic cosmic radiation (GCR) remains a particularly major unresolved technical challenge for inevitably long-duration Mars orbital and surface missions.
Perhaps AI can contribute feasible shielding protection solutions that don’t add excessive rocket launch mass penalties and related fuel requirements.
Crews can be shielded from less penetrative occasional short-term energetic particle radiation released during solar flares using deployable storm shelters with walls filled with water borrowed from temporarily redistributed consumable storage supplies.
Human Mars occupancy adds a mandatory requirement that the initial habitat must be autonomously delivered, powered-up with “lights-on,” prior to initial crew arrival with consumable provisions for a minimum year-and-half-long stay before a next return opportunity.
Solar power won’t be adequate. Small autonomously connected nuclear fission systems will be needed too.
Extended missions and activities for Mars will predictably require larger crews than those going to the Moon – my research and design team estimates a population of about eight initial members compared with four.
This bigger crew will require enlarged habitat and provisioning accommodations with advanced AI controlled systems to treat human waste and recycle precious air to breathe and water to drink.
Martian surface water containing toxic perchlorates will require a separate autonomous purification process before it can be consumed, while metal equipment must be protected from corrosive and abrasive dust that would degrade mechanical operations.
Far remote distances from the closest hardware store or mechanic workshop will require highly automated 3D printing and additive manufacturing for immediate replacements and repairs of small parts that could fail with tragically large consequences.
AI will not only enable humans to establish residence on the Moon and Mars, but it will also be there to greet us when we arrive, help us survive and accomplish remarkable goals, and help avoid and fix health and mechanical problems that can go terribly wrong.
In doing so, artificial intelligence will launch beneficial science and technology progress on Earth to presently unimaginable new heights.
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About the author: Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program.