Mars as a Science Base: Towards a Small Permanent Outpost - Chapter 7

Kurzfassung

From the point of view of astrobiology and planetary sciences, the scientific objectives stated in Sect. 6.1 will remain alive whilst a permanent outpost will be established on the surface of Mars. As a working hypothesis, such an outpost will be permanently or intermittently occupied by a crew. Amongst others, the limitations of the missions and operations will be due to the costs of the launches, of the transport of supporting consumables, instruments, tools, and of the flights and the mission control from the Earth. The crewed missions are based on the current “conjunction” model (see Sect. 6.2). In a continuation of the preceding exploratory missions, it is envisioned to proceed with fairly small crews travelling back and forth. Taking in account the launching windows, there is little chance that the successive crews may cross paths on the station if the increments are not extended to missions of four- or five- year duration, or longer. In this case, the local infrastructure will be larger, more expensive, and will require more consumables and energy. The profiles of the astronauts could also be different with a clear cut between the scientists and the operational engineers and others. In such an outpost, the habitat could be equipped with more sophisticated scientific instruments and some steps of the research work could be performed on site. The limitations induced by the transmission delays will remain the same and the communications between the Martian base and the Terrestrial control centres will remain indirect. Thus, the interactions between the scientists on Mars, and those on the Earth, will be complicated.