A new report published Tuesday<\/a>, titled \u201cA Science Strategy for the Human Exploration of Mars,\u201d represents the answer from leading scientists and engineers in the United States: finding whether life exists, or once did, beyond Earth.<\/p>\n\u201cWe\u2019re searching for life on Mars,\u201d said Dava Newman, a professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-chair of the committee that wrote the report, in an interview with Ars. \u201cThe answer to the question \u2018are we alone\u2018 is always going to be \u2018maybe,\u2019 unless it becomes yes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report, two years in the making and encompassing more than 200 pages, was published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Essentially, the committee co-chaired by Newman and Linda T. Elkins-Tanton, director of the University of California, Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory, was asked to identify the highest-priority science objectives for the first human missions to Mars.<\/p>\n
\u2018No turning back\u2019<\/p>\n
Although coincidental, the report\u2019s publication on Tuesday comes as NASA\u2019s next administrator, private astronaut Jared Isaacman, is expected to be confirmed by the full US Senate in the next week or so. Isaacman is interested in laying the groundwork for future human missions to Mars as SpaceX and Blue Origin take steps toward building reusable in-space transportation systems that could send humans to Mars within the next two decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no turning back,\u201d Newman said. \u201cEveryone is inspired by this because it\u2019s becoming real. We can get there. Decades ago, we didn\u2019t have the technologies. This would have been a study report.\u201d<\/p>\n
The goal of the report is to help build a case for meaningful science to be done on Mars alongside human exploration. The report outlines 11 top-priority science objectives. In order of priority, they are:<\/p>\n
Search for Life: Is there evidence of life, past or present, on Mars?
\nWater and carbon dioxide: Understand how water and carbon cycles changed over time
\nMars geology: Better understand the geological history of the planet
\nCrew health: How do humans fare psychologically, cognitively, and physically in the Martian environment?
\nDust storms: Understand the origin and nature of large dust storms on the planet
\nSearch for resources: Develop in situ resource utilization, focusing initially on water and propellant
\nMars and genomes: Determine whether Mars changes reproduction and genome function in plant and animal species
\nUnderstand microbes: Are microbial populations stable on Mars?
\nMartian dust: How harmful and invasive is dust on humans and their hardware?
\nPlants and animals: Does Mars affect plant and animal physiology and development across generations?
\nRadiation sampling: Better understand the level and impact of radiation on the surface of Mars<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sending astronauts to the red planet will be a decades-long activity and cost many billions of dollars. So…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,141,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-176150","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}