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A spring break trip to Mars

By MICHAEL BOYLAN
mboylan@TheCitizenNews.com

Around this time of year college students gather in places like Daytona Beach, Panama City Beach or South Padre Island for a break from school. Several Georgia Tech students and Fayetteville resident Dr. Jan Osburg, a research engineer in the Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory at Georgia Tech, will be spending the next two weeks in Mars, or rather an area in Utah meant to simulate the first manned mission to Mars.

The Mars Desert Research Station in Utah was built by the Mars Society. It is one of four such stations and gives scientists the ability to conduct long term geology and biology field exploration operations in the same style and under the same constraints as they would be done on Mars. Typically, the groups that conduct the research at the station are meeting for the first time at the station but the group from Georgia Tech has been planning and preparing for this mission for quite awhile. Their commander, Osburg, has been at the station before and will lead them through a challenging period as they simulate life and research on another planet.

Osburg is the faculty advisor for the Mars Society at Georgia Tech and he and the five students will be conducting field testing for contamination on rock samples while they are at the station. They will also be helping out an astronomer by taking pictures of certain stars and, perhaps most importantly, will be testing out a communication system using a Ham Radio Repeater attached to helium balloons.

“It is an idea that has been played with for the first manned missions to Mars,” said Osburg, who feels that such a trip may take place within the next 15-20 years.

The work that he and his fellow crewmates are doing over the next few weeks will be instrumental in how the first base camp on Mars will be set up. The first crew on Mars will have to stay on the planet for close to a year and a half before being able to make the six month journey home. The first station will have to be well designed and by having numerous crews live and work in a simulated base like the one in Utah, a better understanding of what is needed to be successful on Mars is reached.

Among the challenges that the students will face during their stay, the greatest may be the isolation. For students used to being around the bustle of a college campus, they will be out in the middle of nowhere with five other people for two weeks. Their days will be long and filled with work. In addition to their research, a lot of their tasks will be dealing with the housekeeping and maintenance of the station.

“It will be a lot of work,” said Osburg, who stated that the students will be rising early each day and not going to sleep until midnight or later. “They will be compensated by the impact that their work will have and the uniqueness of the situation.”

The situation will resemble space exploration as closely as possible. The station is an eight-meter diameter, two-deck structure on landing struts and the students will serve as pedestrian astronauts walking the surface but also riding in unpressurized light vehicles as well as pressurized rovers.

To follow the students journey and read updates of their work, visit www.gtmars.org.