A long-term Martian Base for 14 astronauts, designed with a small team selected by the NASA SEES Program.

June – July 2020

For NASA SEES Program: NASA, Texas Space Grant Consortium, and The University of Texas at Austin Center for Space Research Summer Intern Program is a nationally competitive STEM program for high school students. The program provides selected students with exposure to Earth and space research. Interns will learn how to interpret NASA satellite data while working with scientists and engineers in their chosen area of work (Mars Exploration). All project teams present their research during the Virtual SEES Science Symposium.

Project Introduction

Through our conceptual Base, my team of 8 strove to provide a well-synthesized and -planned habitat that could become or be the foundation of allowing astronauts to live on Mars for research and exploration. We agreed the Martian landscape could provide new information that could better humanity and understand our life on Earth and its history more fully.

Top Level Requirement: “The Base must support up to 14 people for at least 26 months. They must be kept healthy, safe, and productive.”

We aimed to provide for and support a crew for a long time period and develop a comprehensive conceptual Base, including subsystems and an EDL program. Specifications would be determined and fulfilled by each team member, with advice and support provided by teammates and NASA/UT Austin scientists (our internship mentors) at team meetings.

We split the conceptual base into different subsystems that we agreed would be critical to our final Base. Each team member took one, with some people doubling up or helping with two, depending on the breadth of a given subsystem. Our chosen subsystems were:

• Communications
• Crew Systems
• ECLSS
• EDL & Earth to Mars
• Health Maintenance
• Human Factors
• Power
• Science
• Space Law
• Transportation & ISRU

I studied and designed the ECLSS—or, Environmental Control and Life Support System—for our Base. Essentially, I focused on heating, cooling, ventilation, food supply, water supply, waste management, and radiation protection. My experience from my Astrobotany Research gave me the most comprehensive understanding of this subsystem on my team. I was able to develop a thorough plan for my subsystem that I have included below.

Project Poster

ECLSS Overview

Heating, Cooling, and Ventilation

• Heating and cooling are to be maintained through a multi-layer insulation and an active thermal control system
  • Multi-Layer Insulation (MLI): used on the ISS. Essentialy, MLI is a giant reflective blanket that would live in the walls of the Base and is made of aluminized mylar and dacron. This will keep the heat in.
  • Active thermal control system will contain heat exchangers and cold plates that are cooled using a circulating water loop. These will dehumidify the Base’s atmosphere, as they do on the ISS.
• Ventilation will be supported through water electrolysis and oxygen tanks
  • Water electrolysis uses electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gas. Oxygen will be used to breathe, naturally; hydrogen will be combined with excess carbon dioxide to produce water and methane. The methane will be vented out of the Base.
    • This ventilation system will promote a closed system, essential for a crew that will be without access to Earth resources for 26 months.
  • Additionally, oxygen tanks will be kept as a precaution and used when crew members leave the Base to traverse the surface of Mars.

Food and Water

• Sealed, non-perishable meals will be sent in a preliminary launch, before the crew arrives, as well as 41,844 liters of water.
  • Water quantity can sustain a 14-person crew of 8 women and 6 men for the 26 months, as it accounts for both regular water consumption and water that will be drunk during exercise. Water will be recycled in a closed-system fashion to promote self-sufficiency.
• As an additional means of sustaining themselves, crew members will grow vegetables in Mars regolith—new research, to be sure, but ongoing work yields positive results.
  • We will need to bring some form of nutrient supplement in order to grow the plants: along with human waste, we’ll bring some macronutrient sprays.

Waste Management

• 3 Fs: filtration, fertilization, and freezing.
  • Waste will be filtered for water, used as fertilizer in plant growth, and frozen when there is excess, then disposed of properly.

Radiation Protection

• Primarily ensured through the structure of the Base = a dual shell structure
  • Exterior: acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), a thermoplastic of high quality, durability, and low cost.
  • Middle layer: dirt packing, 5 meters thick to provide approximately the same protection as Earth’s atmosphere. Plastic and dirt are excellent radiation shields.
  • Interior shell: MLI, an insulator and final protection layer, as aluminized mylar shields against radiation.

What I Did

My work on this project was, essentially, extensive material science research, theoretical structural engineering, and gaining a thorough understanding of how astronauts were sustained in space for extended times, as on the International Space Station (ISS). I studied the properties and structures of materials to understand which would strive the balance between effective and inexpensive to maximize the project potential. I brainstormed different potential structures and architectures for the Base that would maximize protection and material efficiency. As I iterated through various structural ideas, I would return to my team with suggestions and update my work to best align with their research and desired additions to the Base. I applied my Astrobotany research that I was conducting simultaneously to improve our food supply plan by lowering mission costs while ensuring astronauts’ health and safety. I also compiled my team members’ predicted costs for their subsystems into a brief cost analysis that we included in our presentation, which I also organized and for which I assumed a leadership role.

Our presentation begins at 2:04:03 and runs until 2:27:26!

About the Team