The goal to someday send a manned mission to Mars is expected to require a suite of new technologies, such as new rocketry, landing gear and operational equipment. But perhaps the most daunting challenge will be life support -- figuring out how to keep astronauts alive and healthy for months in a hostile environment.
Solving that question is slated to be a top priority at the NASA Ames Research Center for years to come, and the campus just embarked on a big step toward that goal. Ames officials last week broke ground on a new $40-million Biosciences Collaboration Facility that is expected to help lead the agency's research in life sciences in outer space.
Biological sciences have grown over the years into a hallmark of research at Ames, said science director Michael Bicay. The field is currently in a "renaissance" at NASA, he said, pointing out that the division's $50 million budget is about five times greater than just a few years ago.
Before any mission to Mars can happen, scientists need to figure out how to mitigate the hazards of deep space, especially for prolonged periods. Except for the Apollo lunar missions, all of NASA's manned space missions have been in low-Earth orbit, meaning that the planet's atmosphere has mostly shielded astronauts from space radiation. Any future missions venturing farther out in space will need to find ways to minimize the risk for its human crew. '
"We've never sent a human into deep space, other than what it took to get to the moon and back, and that was a few days each way," Bicay said. "We need to learn how to survive in deep space for longer periods of time."
Any plans to send astronauts to Mars are still years away -- the agency won't be ready until at least 2030 to attempt such a mission. Such a voyage would take nearly six months, and researchers would need to first study the prolonged effects of weightlessness and radiation on the human body.
The new facility will also be home to NASA's research into astrobiology, the study of how life could exist beyond Earth. This field was pretty much pioneered at Ames about 20 years ago, and it has recently gained a surge of new interest as astronomers have discovered thousands of new planets, including some that have Earth-like characteristics.
It's too early to say what specific research projects will be centered at the new biosciences facility, Bicay said. The biological research conducted by the new center will help make informed decisions at the other NASA campuses doing similar work, particularly the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The new biosciences facility is expected to be complete in by the summer of 2019. About half of the facility is planned for laboratories that will be reconfigurable and designed to encourage more interdisciplinary research.
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