NASA May Put Greenhouse on Mars in 2021


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NASA May Put Greenhouse on Mars in 2021

 

Plant life may touch down on Mars in 2021.

Researchers have proposed putting a plant-growth experiment on NASA's next Mars rover, which is scheduled to launch in mid-2020 and land on the Red Planet in early 2021. The investigation, known as the Mars Plant Experiment (MPX), could help lay the foundation for the colonization of Mars, its designers say.

"In order to do a long-term, sustainable base on Mars, you would want to be able to establish that plants can at least grow on Mars," MPX deputy principal investigator Heather Smith, of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, said April 24 at the Humans 2 Mars conference in Washington, D.C. "This would be the first step in that ? we just send the seeds there and watch them grow."

 

The MPX team ? led by fellow Ames scientist Chris McKay ? isn't suggesting that the 2020 Mars rover should play gardener, digging a hole with its robotic arm and planting seeds in the Red Planet's dirt. Rather, the experiment would be entirely self-contained, eliminating the chance that Earth life could escape and perhaps get a foothold on Mars.

 

mpx-mars-concept.jpg?1399325285

 

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That's an interesting idea. I definitely agree that we need to know whether plants can grow on Mars before we actually send humans there.

 

Though I'm not sure why "isolation" is a big deal. So what if Earth-life "escapes" and gets a foothold on Mars? It's a dead planet, it's not like we can mess it up any more than it already is.

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Ironically, this is the experiment Elon Musk wanted to do in 2000-2002. The high cost of getting a Russian Zenit to launch it prompted him to found SpaceX.

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Yes very ironical, he wanted it there to get more publicity and enthousiasme for Mars.

Well better late then never that NASA is doing something with Mars

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Somehow doubtful, their space shuttle replacements won't be fully operational yet and weren't they just banned from using Russia's space facilities... Which they are using to get humans into space....

But in a way, I'm not really surprised (and very hopeful) that a new space race is firing up.

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When was the Mars One mission actually planned? Wasn't it 2023? Pretty short window for something like this to fail or succeed.

 

Unmanned starts in 2023, first manned missions will be 2024.  So they will have 3 years to grow/evaluate.

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Somehow doubtful, their space shuttle replacements won't be fully operational yet and weren't they just banned from using Russia's space facilities...

The US commercial spacecraft are being acceletated, and Dragon 2/"DragonRider" could be flying SpaceX crews next year.

SpaceX and the others have their own Astronaut Corps, most all former NASA astronauts, and NASA's Astronaut Office has been helping design their control layouts etc. They are already training in CC spacecraft simulators.

As to docking them, they'd dock at the US end using some of the nodes the Dragon, Cygnus and cargo ships use now. All that those nodes need are docking adapters, and they're due to go up on a future Dragon CRS flight.

Nothing the Russians can do but grumble, and the US end generates most of their electrical power ;)

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