Not humans at all, telerobots, controlled from Mars orbit by humans.
There may be human settlements - and eventually even a small colony - in orbit around Mars (if so they would probably eventually use Deimos for resources for things that require mass in bulk such as cosmic radiation shielding, fuel, and water - though due to the surprising way delta v budgets work they might also get resources from NEOs with low delta v transfers to Mars). They would however have to take great care to make sure that no human occupied spaceship - or refuse from our spaceships either - can crash on Mars.
Say that because I expect us to find evidence of present day life on Mars - and whether or not - quite probably are habitats there where present day Earth life can survive. We already have evidence that make such habitats quite likely - very much "life on the edge" just a small seep of liquid in the warm seasonal flows every year in rare places on Mars - or using night time humidity of the atmosphere - but still - may well be a place that Earth microbes, and even lichens, can inhabit.
Which of course also raises the exciting possibility of extant Mars life somewhere on the surface. There are Earth extremophiles with the remarkable ability to repair 2.5 kGy of damage within 3 hours without need to reproduce (in metabolizing Chroococcidiopsis) - and that's believed to be - not because they adapted to cosmic radiation (they are protected from it here on Earth) - but as a biproduct of dessication resistance. Mars life may well be even more radioresistant.
Which means - that it just needs to wake up for a few hours every few decades - possibly longer time periods - to repair all the damage done to their DNA in the time period on Mars, even on the surface. In the warm seasonal flows -microbes may be able to wake up every year.
So we will need to keep humans off the surface at least to start with - and telerobots are ideal for exploration in that situation - because telerobots can be sterilized of microbial life (higher plants such as trees, flowers etc can be also so we might get them as well) - but humans and animals can't be.
They may eventually be humanoid and even to start with will need to have binocular vision and haptic feedback for benefit of their human operators - so will look quite "cute" probably with "eyes" and "hands" (complete with fingers and opposable thumb) - and in the case of the HERRO mission proposal, they also have "whegs" - a cross between a wheel and a leg to make it easier to move around on the rough Mars terrain.
Either that - or increasingly autonomous robots able to make decisions for themselves more and more - with occasional supervision from Earth.
With telerobots you can have humans on the spot to do the decision making just as for humans on the surface.
What slows Spirit and Opportunity down isn't the fact that they are robots - it's this long time delay between Earth and Mars. It's actually far worse than you'd think from the up to 40+ minutes time delay - because the normal method of operation is to download the data for previous day, analyse it, and use it to issue instructions for the next day. So normally the team of researchers on the Earth issue instructions to the Mars rovers one day at a time rather than every hour or two.
The Soviet Lunakhod did in a few months what took years for Opportunity to do on Mars - and that's with 1970s technology.
Lunokhod 2 still holds the record for the longest distance traveled on any solar system body other than the Earth by any rover manned or unmanned (including the Apollo 17 Lunar Roving Vehicle), at 42 km, and did that in 4 months. Opportunity, after over 10 years on Mars hasn't yet traveled that far.
A rover on Mars controlled from orbit using telepresence would probably travel faster than the Lunar roving vehicle (which was limited in its speed due to the requirement that the astronauts always stay close enough to the landing site so that they could walk back to it before their oxygen ran out if the engine failed). Apollo 17 crew spent 7 hours in total on the surface (a lot of time is needed suiting up etc) - and spent three days there.
Based on that data - it seems likely - that a Mars rover operated from orbit by telerobotics could easily travel as far as Opportunity has traveled in ten years, every day. And that's leaving several hours a day for experiments, sample collection etc as well - and not taking account of the greater speed when you don't have the safety requirement that you have to be able to get back to the landing site at a comfortable walking pace in a spacesuit before your oxygen gives out.
Lunokhod 2
With present day technology - and with humans in orbit around Mars, and with telepresence, not even the 2 second delay they had for lunakhod - you could do in weeks or even days what took years to do from Earth.
I think we get a false idea of the capabilities of robots controlled by humans because we have never returned to the Moon.
If we had rovers exploring the Moon we'd discover how much they can do when controlled even from Earth with 2 second delay.
The Chinese lander one is not a good example because they are so far behind in their technology compared with the US - a US "Curiosity style" rover on the Moon would be far more versatile than the 1970s Lunakhod. even controlled from Earth - and if controlled from the L2 position would be arguably a better way to explore than with boots on the Moon - because you don't have to don a spacesuit (and have been proposals to explore the Moon with humans at L2).
At one point they were going to use robots to fix Hubble. The studies were quite promising actually if you look at the detailed reports - but though close, the technology then wasn't quite up to it, humans had enough of an edge to be worth the risk. But that was ten years ago.
They would be able to use telerobots to fix it if the same thing was necessary today (with special tools developed since then and computer systems to make it easier) - and there is active research into developing telerobotic capabilies for fixing satellites in space.
Robots to rescue Hubble telescope (2004)
The Canadian Dextre robot has been doing a series of more and more challenging repair missions on the ISS, which points the way to future of satellite repair - and it's quite possible that in near future the hazardous EVAs of human astronauts in LEO may be a thing of the past (except for recreation).
Dextre - Canada’s Dextre Robot to Perform First Ever Self Repair in Space
And telerobotics is used increasingly on Earth for applications as diverse as deep sea exploration and drilling, and remote surgery (such as surgery performed in France by a surgeon in the US).
Back in 2012 the NASA organized telerobotics symposium already made it clear that telerobotics is likely to be a major part of future space exploration of the solar system - coming to the conclusion for instance that it would be a major missed opportunity for a human flyby or orbital mission to Mars if they did not have a telerobotic capablities for exploring Mars from orbit when they get there. And they also covered the advantages of telerobotics as the only way humans can explore Mars close up without greatly increasing the risk of contaminating the planet with Earth life. Telerobotics Symposium
And in any case - it's pointless to send humans to the surface if they destroy the very thing you are looking for. Try telling the Russians that they have to drill into Lake Vostok (the highly oxygenated under ice lake in Antarctica that has got scientists interested because it's been relatively isolated from the surface for probably millions of years) without taking all these endless precautions to keep the drilling clean. Go further and insist that they must send a human occupied submarine down there because it is taking too long to explore it via the careful approach they are using so far.
If you do that, you will be rightly ignored and told - yes it would be faster but would destroy much of what makes lake Vostock interesting to explore.
Mars is far more interesting than Lake Vostok potentially - for biology - could be the biggest discoveries in biology for the last century - and far more vulnerable to Earth microbes.
So - should do that for Mars anyway - but it turns out - that you actually can explore Mars faster from orbit. At least - that's what one study concluded.
That's because you don't have to don spacesuits - and you can control several different ground missions at once in different parts of Mars - so it is like having three ground crew missions for the price of far less than just one mission to the surface (because they don't have to land on Mars).
That was the conclusion of the HERRO study and that was several years ago now. With present day telerobotics and virtual presence would be even more of an advantage to explore via telerobotics - a field that is advancing very rapidly - I think, if similar study was done (even taking account of improvements in spacesuit design).
Space X -- I'm reasonably confident - won't get permission to land on Mars.
Maybe some of the prospective colonists aren't interested in what we might discover about life on Mars. But for the scientists, especially exobiologists - it is the main reason for going there. It's the main reason we spend billions of dollars sending our spacecraft to Mars instead of the Moon. They won't be well pleased if human missions to Mars contaminate the planet.
It's also required by the Outer Space Treaty (OST) which is international law - and Space X as a US company is required to uphold the OST whenever they venture into space - no matter where they launch from (including sea launch or launch from other countries) - and the US government is tasked with making sure that they do so under the OST. And the OST also has provisions for other countries to raise objections to stop the launch if they believe that the US is not fulfilling their obligations under the treaty. So China, Russia, the ESA, Japan, India, etc etc, and non space faring signatories also - all have the right to raise objections to Elon Musk's plans under the OST, even though his is a US company and even if he launches from US territory.
Same also applies to Mars One of course, the Netherlands is a signatory of the OST - and actually interestingly it is also one of the few signatories of the more restrictive Moon treaty - so I think that suggests that if it comes to the crunch, the Netherlands government would be strongly in support of keeping to the terms of the OST strictly. And since they would use US technology they would also come under all the provisions of the US as well. The OST makes it clear that when you have multiple states involved in a space mission - then they are all jointly responsible for making sure that the OST is upheld by their citizens.
And it's not just a paper treaty. It is taken extremely seriously - and the COSPAR group of thousands of scientists meets every two years to discuss the details of its implementation and to draw up guidelines for spacecraft sterilization and planetary protection requirements - amongst other things. Many workshops every 2 years on this. And US maintains planetary protection office as does the ESA to help make sure their fulfill the obligations under the OST.
Certainly neither SpaceX nor Mars One nor the US government nor the Netherlands government have given any hint of any course of action other than to comply fully with the OST. And so if they did send humans to the Mars surface they would be required to show that this does not adversely impact on the studies of Mars by other parties to the treaty. In particular they need to show that it does not adversely impact on study of the origins of life and present day life on Mars - and that it prevents harmful contamination.
And over the last several decades it is clear that harmful contamination in the sense of the OST is understood to include any instance of introducing life to another planet not native to the planet which then reproduces there.
And actually - unplanned introduction of Earth microbes leading to contamination of Mars by Earth life - without first working through the possible consequences in detail - could be a problem for future human colonists also if the decision is made eventually to colonize the planet.
Imagined Colours Of Future Mars - What Happens If We Treat A Planet As A Giant Petri Dish?
There may be human settlements - and eventually even a small colony - in orbit around Mars (if so they would probably eventually use Deimos for resources for things that require mass in bulk such as cosmic radiation shielding, fuel, and water - though due to the surprising way delta v budgets work they might also get resources from NEOs with low delta v transfers to Mars). They would however have to take great care to make sure that no human occupied spaceship - or refuse from our spaceships either - can crash on Mars.
Say that because I expect us to find evidence of present day life on Mars - and whether or not - quite probably are habitats there where present day Earth life can survive. We already have evidence that make such habitats quite likely - very much "life on the edge" just a small seep of liquid in the warm seasonal flows every year in rare places on Mars - or using night time humidity of the atmosphere - but still - may well be a place that Earth microbes, and even lichens, can inhabit.
Which of course also raises the exciting possibility of extant Mars life somewhere on the surface. There are Earth extremophiles with the remarkable ability to repair 2.5 kGy of damage within 3 hours without need to reproduce (in metabolizing Chroococcidiopsis) - and that's believed to be - not because they adapted to cosmic radiation (they are protected from it here on Earth) - but as a biproduct of dessication resistance. Mars life may well be even more radioresistant.
Which means - that it just needs to wake up for a few hours every few decades - possibly longer time periods - to repair all the damage done to their DNA in the time period on Mars, even on the surface. In the warm seasonal flows -microbes may be able to wake up every year.
So we will need to keep humans off the surface at least to start with - and telerobots are ideal for exploration in that situation - because telerobots can be sterilized of microbial life (higher plants such as trees, flowers etc can be also so we might get them as well) - but humans and animals can't be.
They may eventually be humanoid and even to start with will need to have binocular vision and haptic feedback for benefit of their human operators - so will look quite "cute" probably with "eyes" and "hands" (complete with fingers and opposable thumb) - and in the case of the HERRO mission proposal, they also have "whegs" - a cross between a wheel and a leg to make it easier to move around on the rough Mars terrain.
Either that - or increasingly autonomous robots able to make decisions for themselves more and more - with occasional supervision from Earth.
WHY TELEROBOTS ARE AS GOOD AS HUMANS
With telerobots you can have humans on the spot to do the decision making just as for humans on the surface.
What slows Spirit and Opportunity down isn't the fact that they are robots - it's this long time delay between Earth and Mars. It's actually far worse than you'd think from the up to 40+ minutes time delay - because the normal method of operation is to download the data for previous day, analyse it, and use it to issue instructions for the next day. So normally the team of researchers on the Earth issue instructions to the Mars rovers one day at a time rather than every hour or two.
The Soviet Lunakhod did in a few months what took years for Opportunity to do on Mars - and that's with 1970s technology.
Lunokhod 2 still holds the record for the longest distance traveled on any solar system body other than the Earth by any rover manned or unmanned (including the Apollo 17 Lunar Roving Vehicle), at 42 km, and did that in 4 months. Opportunity, after over 10 years on Mars hasn't yet traveled that far.
A rover on Mars controlled from orbit using telepresence would probably travel faster than the Lunar roving vehicle (which was limited in its speed due to the requirement that the astronauts always stay close enough to the landing site so that they could walk back to it before their oxygen ran out if the engine failed). Apollo 17 crew spent 7 hours in total on the surface (a lot of time is needed suiting up etc) - and spent three days there.
Based on that data - it seems likely - that a Mars rover operated from orbit by telerobotics could easily travel as far as Opportunity has traveled in ten years, every day. And that's leaving several hours a day for experiments, sample collection etc as well - and not taking account of the greater speed when you don't have the safety requirement that you have to be able to get back to the landing site at a comfortable walking pace in a spacesuit before your oxygen gives out.
Lunokhod 2
With present day technology - and with humans in orbit around Mars, and with telepresence, not even the 2 second delay they had for lunakhod - you could do in weeks or even days what took years to do from Earth.
I think we get a false idea of the capabilities of robots controlled by humans because we have never returned to the Moon.
If we had rovers exploring the Moon we'd discover how much they can do when controlled even from Earth with 2 second delay.
The Chinese lander one is not a good example because they are so far behind in their technology compared with the US - a US "Curiosity style" rover on the Moon would be far more versatile than the 1970s Lunakhod. even controlled from Earth - and if controlled from the L2 position would be arguably a better way to explore than with boots on the Moon - because you don't have to don a spacesuit (and have been proposals to explore the Moon with humans at L2).
At one point they were going to use robots to fix Hubble. The studies were quite promising actually if you look at the detailed reports - but though close, the technology then wasn't quite up to it, humans had enough of an edge to be worth the risk. But that was ten years ago.
They would be able to use telerobots to fix it if the same thing was necessary today (with special tools developed since then and computer systems to make it easier) - and there is active research into developing telerobotic capabilies for fixing satellites in space.
Robots to rescue Hubble telescope (2004)
The Canadian Dextre robot has been doing a series of more and more challenging repair missions on the ISS, which points the way to future of satellite repair - and it's quite possible that in near future the hazardous EVAs of human astronauts in LEO may be a thing of the past (except for recreation).
Dextre - Canada’s Dextre Robot to Perform First Ever Self Repair in Space
And telerobotics is used increasingly on Earth for applications as diverse as deep sea exploration and drilling, and remote surgery (such as surgery performed in France by a surgeon in the US).
Back in 2012 the NASA organized telerobotics symposium already made it clear that telerobotics is likely to be a major part of future space exploration of the solar system - coming to the conclusion for instance that it would be a major missed opportunity for a human flyby or orbital mission to Mars if they did not have a telerobotic capablities for exploring Mars from orbit when they get there. And they also covered the advantages of telerobotics as the only way humans can explore Mars close up without greatly increasing the risk of contaminating the planet with Earth life. Telerobotics Symposium
WHY WE SHOULDN'T SEND HUMANS TO MARS ANYWAY EVEN IF THEY WERE MORE EFFICIENT THAN TELEROBOTS CONTROLLED FROM MARS ORBIT
And in any case - it's pointless to send humans to the surface if they destroy the very thing you are looking for. Try telling the Russians that they have to drill into Lake Vostok (the highly oxygenated under ice lake in Antarctica that has got scientists interested because it's been relatively isolated from the surface for probably millions of years) without taking all these endless precautions to keep the drilling clean. Go further and insist that they must send a human occupied submarine down there because it is taking too long to explore it via the careful approach they are using so far.
If you do that, you will be rightly ignored and told - yes it would be faster but would destroy much of what makes lake Vostock interesting to explore.
Mars is far more interesting than Lake Vostok potentially - for biology - could be the biggest discoveries in biology for the last century - and far more vulnerable to Earth microbes.
So - should do that for Mars anyway - but it turns out - that you actually can explore Mars faster from orbit. At least - that's what one study concluded.
That's because you don't have to don spacesuits - and you can control several different ground missions at once in different parts of Mars - so it is like having three ground crew missions for the price of far less than just one mission to the surface (because they don't have to land on Mars).
That was the conclusion of the HERRO study and that was several years ago now. With present day telerobotics and virtual presence would be even more of an advantage to explore via telerobotics - a field that is advancing very rapidly - I think, if similar study was done (even taking account of improvements in spacesuit design).
OBLIGATION UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW
Space X -- I'm reasonably confident - won't get permission to land on Mars.
Maybe some of the prospective colonists aren't interested in what we might discover about life on Mars. But for the scientists, especially exobiologists - it is the main reason for going there. It's the main reason we spend billions of dollars sending our spacecraft to Mars instead of the Moon. They won't be well pleased if human missions to Mars contaminate the planet.
It's also required by the Outer Space Treaty (OST) which is international law - and Space X as a US company is required to uphold the OST whenever they venture into space - no matter where they launch from (including sea launch or launch from other countries) - and the US government is tasked with making sure that they do so under the OST. And the OST also has provisions for other countries to raise objections to stop the launch if they believe that the US is not fulfilling their obligations under the treaty. So China, Russia, the ESA, Japan, India, etc etc, and non space faring signatories also - all have the right to raise objections to Elon Musk's plans under the OST, even though his is a US company and even if he launches from US territory.
Same also applies to Mars One of course, the Netherlands is a signatory of the OST - and actually interestingly it is also one of the few signatories of the more restrictive Moon treaty - so I think that suggests that if it comes to the crunch, the Netherlands government would be strongly in support of keeping to the terms of the OST strictly. And since they would use US technology they would also come under all the provisions of the US as well. The OST makes it clear that when you have multiple states involved in a space mission - then they are all jointly responsible for making sure that the OST is upheld by their citizens.
And it's not just a paper treaty. It is taken extremely seriously - and the COSPAR group of thousands of scientists meets every two years to discuss the details of its implementation and to draw up guidelines for spacecraft sterilization and planetary protection requirements - amongst other things. Many workshops every 2 years on this. And US maintains planetary protection office as does the ESA to help make sure their fulfill the obligations under the OST.
Certainly neither SpaceX nor Mars One nor the US government nor the Netherlands government have given any hint of any course of action other than to comply fully with the OST. And so if they did send humans to the Mars surface they would be required to show that this does not adversely impact on the studies of Mars by other parties to the treaty. In particular they need to show that it does not adversely impact on study of the origins of life and present day life on Mars - and that it prevents harmful contamination.
And over the last several decades it is clear that harmful contamination in the sense of the OST is understood to include any instance of introducing life to another planet not native to the planet which then reproduces there.
And actually - unplanned introduction of Earth microbes leading to contamination of Mars by Earth life - without first working through the possible consequences in detail - could be a problem for future human colonists also if the decision is made eventually to colonize the planet.
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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