SURVIVING ON MARS WITHOUT NUCLEAR ENERGY

Current strategies for early missions to Mars are highly dependent on the assumption of nuclear power as the primary near-term energy supply. Since political considerations may prohibit the launch of nuclear systems, this paper investigates the potential for utilizing in situ energy sources on Mars to either supplement or replace nuclear power. The current knowledge of solar, wind, and areothermal energy resources on Mars is discussed, and the studies required to identify these resources and further characterize their distribution and abundance is given. A non-nuclear power system for the first Mars mission could be based on a combination of solar and wind energy coupled with a liquid fuel storage system. Indications are that such a system, using the latest solar cell technology, could be cost competitive with nuclear power in terms of kiloWatts per kilogram delivered to the Martian surface. Areothermal energy has significant potential, but the development of this resource will require longer term space and surface based exploration. The work reported herein advances the current knowledge base with the following accomplishments: (1) collecting models to jointly estimate solar and wind power production; (2) utilizing terrestrial geothermal exploration techniques coupled to remote sensing data from Mars to refine potential regions of exploitable planetary heat sources; and (3) suggesting that an early Mars mission that relies heavily on in-situ energy sources will require additional precursor information on energy resource location, extent, and accessibility. It is proposed that the production of energy on Mars, solely from local resources, may be practical enough to render a small outpost completely self-sufficient. Moreover, the addition of in-situ energy resource development to that for life support and transportation may advance the development of larger permanent self-sufficient human colonies on Mars