Technological contribution to Mars mission

In this section, the potential contribution of each intermediate destination concept of the reference scenario to NASA DRA 5.0 is briefly discussed. Each intermediate destination can contribute to the achievement of the technological capabilities required for Mars in di↵erent percentage considering technologies required or anyway applicable at the specific destination. Table 5.33 summarizes the number and the percentage of Mars required technologies which, in each intermediate destination, are:

• required,

• applicable/demo,

• applicable/demo or required, • not applicable.

The percentages are evaluated considering that 64 technologies in total are required for Mars, according to the NASA DRA 5.0 concept [3].

Analyzed concept

Technologies

Required Applicable/demo Required or Ap-

plicable/demo Not applicable

# [%] # [%] # [%] # [%] ISS 7 10.9 24 37.5 28 43.8 36 56.2 Cis-lunar 30 46.9 22 34.3 37 57.8 27 42.2 Moon sortie 38 59.4 48 75 56 87.5 8 12.5 Moon outpost 48 75 24 37.5 53 82.8 11 17.2 NEA 35 54.7 18 28.1 41 64.1 23 35.9 Mars preparation 36 56.3 52 81.3 61 95.3 3 4.7

Table 5.33: Destinations concepts contribution to NASA DRA 5.0

These data are obtained starting from the mapping tables developed for all the techno- logical areas, deriving for each destination the total number of required and applicable technologies, and expressing it as a percentage of the Mars required technologies. Table 5.33 also indicates the percentage of “required or applicable/demo”, that refers to the technologies that can actually be implemented at the specific destination (being either required or applicable/demo).

The graphs reported in figures 5.17, 5.18 and 5.19 graphically summarize the obtained results for the intermediate destinations, showing the percentages of Mars required technologies that are required or applicable in the intermediate concepts. From figure

5. TECHNOLOGICAL SOLUTIONS

Figure 5.17: Percentage of required technologies to implement in intermediate destina- tions

5.17 it is evident that Moon Outpost requires 75% of the technologies required for Mars. It is followed by Moon Sortie, Mars Preparation and NEA. As foreseeable the ISS does not require many new technologies, and specifically the resulting 11% refers to the technologies needed for the new modules part of the ISS concepts (and not to the already deployed ISS modules). Considering the applicability/demo of the technolo- gies through the intermediate destinations (graph in figure 5.18), the Mars Preparation concept represents the best test-bed with more than 80% of the Mars required Tech- nologies. The Moon Sortie concept is also a good option to implement technologies needed for Mars (75%).

Figure 5.18: Percentage of applicable technologies to implement in intermediate destina- tions

Finally, the last graph (figure 5.19) provides the resulting percentage of technologies that are required or applicable at the specific destination.

5.2 Discussion

Figure 5.19: Percentage of required or applicable technologies to implement in interme- diate destinations

A specific technology can be required for an element while applicable to another element of the same destination concept (this explains why the “Applicable/Demo or Required” value is not given by the sum of the only “Required” and the only “Applicable/Demo” values). For example, considering the cis-lunar concept and the technology “Advanced Deployable Structure”, this technology is required in one element, that is the CEV-SM (table 5.13), but is also applicable to the EML1-HAB (table 5.14). In this case, when counting the total number of technologies, it is counted as one in both the “required” and “applicable” categories, but it is counted only once in the “Applicable/Demo or Required” category (and not two as it would be by summing the “required” and “ap- plicable” values). The same types of considerations can be done done for all other technologies.

The last graph (figure 5.19) is the one that best highlights the contribution of each destination to the achievement of the technological capabilities required for Mars. As a matter of fact, it refers to the actual number of technologies which can be validated at the destination, being them either required or applicable.

5.2

Discussion

The obtained results represent a good support for the identification of the most critical technologies to be developed, highlighting also the timeframe in which they are needed. This could be very useful, in order to well place investments in the development of specific systems necessary to allow future space exploration missions.

5. TECHNOLOGICAL SOLUTIONS

The complete set of obtained results is helpful to support technologies developments strategic decisions and can answer the questions about the most required/applicable technologies for the whole scenario or for a single destination. Moreover the tool gives information about when a technology shall be ready and in this respect could provide an input to define an adequate development plan.

Just as an example of how to use the tool, consider as target the cis-lunar concept and consider the technology “Advanced Secondary-Tertiary Structures”. This technology is required in three elements of the cis-lunar concept and specifically the first time it is needed is in 2017 in the EML1-HAB (see tables 5.13). However, looking at table 5.14, it appears clear that this technology can be previously implemented and tested at the ISS (in one of the elements foreseen for the ISS concept like the ATV-like module, PMM-like or inflatable demo). This type of consideration can be done for all the tech- nologies needed for the cis-lunar concept, thus allowing the definition of an opportune roadmap for those technologies, in terms of their development and implementation in “easier” missions to validate them prior to the cis-lunar missions. Starting from these results, further analyses could be devoted to the evaluation of interdependencies be- tween technology development activities.

The graphs discussed in section 5.1.4 can be exploited to take strategic decisions in support of future human space exploration, also in terms of target destinations selec- tion. Indeed, looking at the technologies implementable in the various intermediate destinations, it is possible to have indications about which are the most interesting destinations for future deep space exploration, and in particular from a technological development point of view, having as final objective a human mission to Mars. For example, the lunar concepts (Moon sortie and Moon outpost) are better test-beds than NEA for what concerns the Mars required technologies. Moreover, as conceivable, the ISS concept does not require many Mars required technologies, but a large percentage of them (37.5%) is applicable there. In total, more than 43% of the technologies re- quired for Mars are implementable (required or applicable) at the ISS where they can be tested and validated, without the need of new infrastructure or other location in space. On the basis of this result a very important conclusion can be drawn, in terms of strategic decisions: the operative life of ISS shall be extended as much as possible, in order to fully exploit its potential capabilities in the framework of future human space exploration. Furthermore, the analyses results show that the Cis-lunar concept