Early crewed Mars mission concepts developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) assumed a single, large habitat would house six crew members for a 500-day Mars surface stay. At the end of the first mission, all surface equipment-including the habitat-would be abandoned and the process would be repeated at a different Martian landing site. This work was documented in a series of NASA publications culminating with the Mars Design Reference Architecture 5.0. More recent work, dubbed the Evolvable Mars Campaign (EMC), explored whether re-using surface equipment at a single landing site could be more affordable than the Apollo-style explore-abandon-repeat mission cadence. Initial EMC assumptions preserved the single, monolithic habitat-the only difference being a new requirement to reuse the surface habitat for multiple expedition crews. A trade study comparing a single large habitat versus smaller, modular habitats leaned towards the monolithic approach as more mass-efficient. More recent work has focused on the operational aspects of building up Mars surface infrastructure over multiple missions, and has identified compelling advantages of a modular approach that should be considered before making a final decision. This paper explores Mars surface mission operational concepts and integrated system analysis, and presents an argument for the modular habitat approach.
Advantages of a Modular Mars Surface Habitat Approach
SPACE 2018 ; 2018 ; Orlando, FL, United States
2018-09-17
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Keine Angabe
Englisch
Advantages of a Modular Mars Surface Habitat Approach
NTRS | 2018
|Advantages of a Modular Mars Surface Habitat Approach
NTRS | 2018
|Advantages of a Modular Mars Surface Habitat Approach
AIAA | 2018
|ADVANTAGES OF A MODULAR MARS SURFACE HABITAT APPROACH (AIAA 2018-5102)
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2018
|Mars Surface Habitat Concept Design
AIAA | 2023
|