Impact of the Exploitation of In Situ Resources on the European Mars Exploration Architecture
- Paper number
IAC-08.A5.1.3
- Author
Mr. Marco Grasso, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
- Coauthor
Dr. Michèle Lavagna, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
- Coauthor
Dr. Alberto Della Torre, Carlo Gavazzi Space, Italy
- Coauthor
Dr. Igor Vukman, Carlo Gavazzi Space, Italy
- Coauthor
Mr. Emanuele Monchieri, Carlo Gavazzi Space S.p.A., Italy
- Year
2008
- Abstract
Future human missions to Mars will be characterized by the need of deploying different elements on the Mars surface and very large masses to be launched from Earth. The exploration architecture is thus expected to include multiple launches, and to require heavy lift capabilities, together with advanced space propulsion solutions. A large fraction of those masses is represented by consumables, mainly oxygen, water and buffer gases for Environment Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSSs), and propellant for the different phases of the mission. The capability of producing directly in situ part of the necessary consumables, is a key point to allow humans to work and live on Mars limiting, or possibly avoiding, the need for re-supplies of materials from Earth. Starting from the activities that Carlo Gavazzi Space and Politecnico di Milano are performing in the frame of the ESA Study on Surface Architectures for European Space Exploration, the paper discusses the requirements for future Mars exploration architectures, with special regard to the ones that require or benefit from the exploitation of the In-situ Resources. Moreover, the required ISRU Elements are identified, it is investigated how they can be integrated and harmonized into the overall Surface Architecture, which are the implications on the design and performances of the Elements that can benefit from the exploitation of In-situ Resources, both on Mars Surface and on the other Segments of the overall Exploration Architecture, with special regard to Transportation Segment. The ISRU impacts on the overall Architecture development roadmap will be eventually assessed, highlighting which are the benefits provided w.r.t. to non ISRU – based approaches, and the key trade-off analysis to be performed. Some technological solutions for Mars ISRU plants are then evaluated - for a number of possible utilization scenarios -, and eventually a preliminary design of a technological demonstration plant is presented. It consists in a small unit which can be included into a precursor robotic mission. Two different configurations are described, both driven by the need of maximising the synergy between the capability of producing materials that can be used as life support consumables (oxygen and water), and materials that can be used as propellants (oxygen and methane – in the first configuration - or ethylene – in the second one - ). The demo plant is based on Reverse Water Gas Shift, Sabatier reactor and Fischer Tropsch reactor technologies [1][2]. [1] R. Zubrin, B. Frankie, T. Kito, Mars In-Situ Resource Utilization Based on the Reverse Water Gas Shift: Experiments and Mission Applications, 1997, AIAA 97-2767 [2] D. Rapp, A.J. Easter, J.H. Smith, T.J. Wilson, D.L. Clark, K. Payne, Preliminary System Analysis of In Situ Resources Utilization for Mars Human Exploration, Aerospace Conference , 2005 IEEE, 5-12 March 2005
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-08.A5.1.3.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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