New Heights for Mars research at SFU - Eldrbarry



Mars Research in High Gear at Simon Fraser University

Improved pressure chamber will equip Mars mission research

by Paul A. McWilliams

Humans are exploring the surface of the planet Mars even today, by proxy. Two small robotic rovers, known as Spirit and Opportunity, are being driven around by remote control and sending data about the red planet from a myriad of advanced instruments. Despite the diligent best efforts of our robot geologists, sending humans is a long term aspiration of President Bush’s January announcement of a vision for the space program.

Getting people to mars and returning them home safely is a monumental task and will require a great many preparations. The problems that must be solved include creating spacesuits that will be durable in the harsh environment of mars, the practical difficulties of working the confines of a spacecraft, the challenges of interplanetary communication and the effects of long term weightlessness on the human body.

Researchers at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Burnaby, B.C., are already working to solutions to many those problems. Recently completed improvements to a hypobaric/hyperbaric chamber at SFU’s Environmental Physiology Unit, which can simulate both high and low pressure environments, make it a versatile tool for Andrew Blaber and his colleagues at SFU in their ongoing Mars research.

The upgrades, funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, in Ottawa, through the B.C. knowledge development fund, include more powerful vacuum pumps. These will make the chamber capable of simulating much lower atmospheric pressures than before, even as low as the pressures that astronauts will find on the surface of Mars—equivalent to an Earth altitude of 110,000 feet. The chamber, which has been in operation since 1981, is also used for optional high altitude training for civil general-aviation pilots, and other research. It was previously only capable able of creating a pressure equivalent to an Earth altitude of about 45,000 feet. In its hyperbaric capacity, the chamber can create pressure equivalent to that found 1000 feet of seawater.

The upgrade project began in 1997 when another NASA rover, called Sojourner, was exploring mars. Andrew Blaber, now director of the Aerospace Physiology Lab at Simon Fraser University, had already been working on Mars mission research, involving long term weightlessness, when he saw the Sojourner television coverage. “I saw the weather report and realized that the pressure on Mars was 110,000 feet.” He thought about the chamber at SFU and realized that, “45,000 feet wasn’t getting us anywhere new,” so they put in for money for the new pumps. The upgrades, which also include new plumbing, backup power, and insulation, were completed at a total cost around $100,000.

The chamber is also equipped with a gas mixing system that can create a simulated Martian atmosphere. Researches can even put materials into the chamber to simulate the surface of Mars. Temperature is the one aspect of the Mars weather that is outside the capabilities of the chamber by itself, but smaller liquid nitrogen cooled micro-chambers can be placed within the chamber to simulate the minus 140 centigrade temperatures of the red planet. The main chamber is 4.5 meters in length and 2 meters in diameter. The size of the round door, less than a meter in diameter, is the major limitation to what can be placed inside. However, it is possible to assemble larger objects inside the chamber.

Beyond using the chamber to test space-suits, rovers, and other equipment, possible Mars applications for the chamber include low pressure horticulture. The success of horticulture on Mars will be crucial for any long-term manned presence on mars. So far, experiments have been conducted growing plants in as little as one-third of earth’s atmospheric pressure. The chamber could be used to create the much lower pressure needed to simulate Mars. Plentiful carbon dioxide, abundant in the atmosphere of Mars, might be an advantage to plants, but the questions about the viability of plants in the low pressures and the light conditions of Mars remain to be answered.

The concept of horticulture on Mars also raises important ethical and political concerns about the introduction of foreign species, which may disturb life that might exist on mars. Part of the reason that the chamber is so very useful for conducting such research is that it is part of a major university. “It gives us a lot more flexibility, lots of people from different disciplines to draw on.” The Environmental Physiology Unit comes with the other support structures of the University.

Even without the new vacuum pumps, the chamber’s other physical attributes make it ideal for simulating many of the practical aspects of a Mars mission. “The plumbing and construction of the chamber make it very similar to that of a spacecraft on the ground,” says Blaber. Communication issues are among those already being explored in ongoing SFU research in conjunction with the Haughton-Mars Project, in conjunction with the NASA Ames Research center, at Moffet Field, Calif., on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic. The Haughton crater sight, located on the largest uninhabited Island in the world, is an earth location that has many of the attributes of Mars. Internal networking and data transmission challenges can be explored. The chamber can be reconfigured to simulate many of the other aspects of the work environment of a Mars base. A proposal to fund some such experiments has already been submitted.

Although many question the wisdom of pursuing manned missions to Mars, many in the United States many see the Presidents recent announcements as mere political posturing. Blaber is more enthusiastic about the value of such exploration. “We have been in a holding pattern around earth,” he says of recent efforts, “we need to start thinking ahead.” Mars has and atmosphere, and recent evidence suggests that it had and atmosphere. “It’s the doable, within the realm of possibility,” says Blaber. The question is, he suggests, “why would you do it?” Although rovers and remote sensing systems have been very successful at gathering information, “you can only do so much problem solving with serendipitous data. Blaber sites the fact that vulcanologists still approach volcanoes at personal risk despite the availability of robots and remote sensing equipment. “Serendipitous data,” Blaber points out, are often important for scientific advancement.

Besides the Chamber at SFU, Blaber is involved in other important Mars mission related research. According to Blaber, one of the first challenges that human explorers will face, when they arrive on Mars, may just be standing up. The research study, centered at the University of Guelph, in Guelph, Ontario, is looking at human responses to long term weightlessness.

Between 30 and 40 percent of returning astronauts have trouble standing for more than ten minutes after space flights even as short as 8 days. Of those, some can’t even stand for five minutes and many have problems with fainting. A flight would take about, “six months if you’re talking about Mars,” says Blaber.

The study that Blaber is part of has looked at 32 astronauts before and after their flights. The goal of the study is to figure out why some astronauts have trouble standing after return to gravity, learn to predict who will have such problems, and how to prevent the problems from happening.

Because the astronauts are a limited population, statistical models for who will and won’t faint are hard to come by. Researches do know that some groups are not affected by that fainting, and they know that those groups look different, physiologically, but they aren’t sure why some groups are more prone to fainting, or even what triggers the changes in the blood pressure regulation that lead to fainting. The eventual goal is to design protocols and tailored countermeasures for individuals.

Paul McWilliams is a senior in technical communication at University of Washington.

[Contacts:]

Andrew Blaber, Director Aerospace Physiology Lab, Simon Fraser University

604.291.3276

ablaber@sfu.ca

[Images:]

Marianne Meadahl

SFU Media & Public relations

Tel: 604.291.4323

Fax: 604.291.3039

marianne_meadahl@sfu.ca

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[blaber.a.mm.jpg] Andrew Blaber is the Director of the Aerospace Physiology Laboratory at Simon Fraser University’s School of Kinesiology. (Marianne Meadahl, Simon Fraser Unversity)

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[chamber-outside.jpg] Improvements to the Environmental Physiology Unit’s hypobaric/hyperbaric chamber will make it a versatile tool for ongoing and future Mars research. (Simon Fraser University)

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[looking-in.jpg]The diameter of round door limits the size of objects that can be placed inside; however, larger objects may be assembled inside. (Simon Fraser University)

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