News Feeds

The idea of terraforming Mars, making its atmosphere and environment more Earth-like for human settlement, goes back decades. During that time, many proposed methods have been considered and put aside as “too expensive” or requiring technology well in advance of what we have today. Nevertheless, the idea has persisted and is often considered a part of long-term plans for establishing a human presence on Mars. Given the many plans to establish human outposts on the Moon and then use that infrastructure to send missions to Mars, opportunities for terraforming may be closer than we think.

Unfortunately, any plans for terraforming Mars suffer from unresolved hurdles, not the least of which are the expense, distance, and the need for technologies that don’t currently exist. Triggering a greenhouse effect and warming the surface of Mars would take massive amounts of greenhouse gases, which would be very difficult and expensive to transport. However, a team of engineers and geophysicists led by the University of Chicago proposed a new method for terraforming Mars with nanoparticles. This method would take advantage of resources already present on the Martian surface and, according to their feasibility study, would be enough to start the terraforming process.

The team was led by Samaneh Ansari, a postdoctoral student at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Northwestern University. She was joined by Edwin Kite, an Assistant Professor of Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago; Ramses Ramirez, an Assistant Professor with the Department of Physics at the University of Central Florida; Liam J. Steele, a former postdoctoral researcher at UChicago, now with the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), and Hooman Mohseni, a Professor of ECE at Northwestern (and Ansari’s postdoc advisor).

As addressed in previous articles, the process of terraforming Mars comes down to a few steps, all of which are complementary. This is to say, progress made in one area will invariably have a positive effect on another. Those steps include:

1. Warming the planet
2. Thickening the atmosphere
3. Melting the water ice

By warming the planet, the polar ice caps and permafrost would melt, releasing liquid water onto the surface and as vapor into the atmosphere. The abundant amounts of dry ice in both ice caps (especially in the southern hemisphere) would also be released, thickening the atmosphere and warming it further. As Robert Zubrin argued in The Case for Mars, this would lead to an atmospheric pressure (atm) of about 300 millibars (30% of Earth’s atm at sea level), which would allow for people to stand outside on the surface without a pressure suit (though they would still need warm clothing and bottled oxygen).

In the past, proposals for terraforming Mars have recommended that the first step be achieved by triggering a greenhouse effect, most notably by introducing additional greenhouse gases. Examples include additional carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia, and chlorofluorocarbons, which would either need to be mined on Mars or imported from Earth (or Venus, Titan, and the outer Solar System). Unfortunately, these options would require a fleet of spacecraft making two-way trips to Mars, Venus, or the outer Solar System and/or heavy mining operations on Mars.

In contrast, the proposal put forth by Ansari and her colleagues involves using engineered dust particles fashioned from local minerals*. Thanks to missions like Curiosity and Perseverance, which have obtained multiple samples of rock and soil for analysis, we know that dust grains on Mars are rich in iron and aluminum. When fashioned into conductive nanorods measuring about 9 micrometers long – the width of a very thin human hair – and arranged in different configurations, these particles could released into the atmosphere, where they would absorb and scatter sunlight.

Image taken by the Viking 1 orbiter in June 1976, showing Mars’ thin atmosphere and dusty, red surface. Credits: NASA/Viking 1

To determine the extent to which these particles would affect Mars’ atmosphere, the team conducted simulations using the Quest high-performance computing cluster at Northwestern University and the Midway 2 computing cluster at the University of Chicago Research Computing Center (RCC). Based on a 10-year particle lifetime, two climate models were simulated where 30 liters (7.9 gallons) of nanoparticles per second were consistently launched into the atmosphere. Their results indicate that this process would warm Mars by more than 30 °C (86 °F), enough to trigger the melting of the polar ice caps.

Based on their simulations, the team found that their method is over 5,000 times more efficient than previous proposals to trigger a greenhouse effect on Mars. In addition, the average temperature increase would make the Martian environment suitable for microbial life, which is vital for plans to ecologically transform Mars. Through the introduction of photosynthetic bacteria (like cyanobacteria), atmospheric carbon dioxide could be slowly converted into oxygen gas. This is precisely how oxygen became an integral part of Earth’s atmosphere, starting 3.5 billion years ago.

As Kite indicated in a UChicago News story, this method would still take decades but would be logistically easier and much cheaper than current plans to terraform Mars:

“This suggests that the barrier to warming Mars to allow liquid water is not as high as previously thought. You’d still need millions of tons to warm the planet, but that’s five thousand times less than you would need with previous proposals to globally warm Mars. This significantly increases the feasibility of the project. This suggests that the barrier to warming Mars to allow liquid water is not as high as previously thought.”

Naturally, a lot of additional research needs to be done before such a method can be field-tested on Mars. Not the least of which are the unresolved questions of how the particles will be affected by atmospheric changes on Mars. Currently, Mars experiences cloud formation and precipitation in the form of dry ice condensing in the atmosphere and falling back toward the surface as CO2 snow. Once the polar ice caps are melted, Mars could experience more cloud cover and precipitation involving water, which could condense around the particles, causing them to fall back to the surface in raindrops.

This artist’s impression shows how Mars may have looked about four billion years ago when much of its surface was covered in liquid water. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

This and other potential climate feedback mechanisms could lead to a myriad of problems. But one of the best aspects of this proposed method is its reversibility. Simply stop producing and releasing the particles into the atmosphere, and the warming effect will end with time. What’s more, the focus of the study only extends to warming the atmosphere to the extent that microbial life could live there and food crops eventually planted. Nevertheless, this study offers terraforming enthusiasts a viable and more affordable option for getting the ball rolling on the whole “Greening of Mars” process. Said Kite:

“Climate feedbacks are really difficult to model accurately. To implement something like this, we would need more data from both Mars and Earth, and we’d need to proceed slowly and reversibly to ensure the effects work as intended. This research opens new avenues for exploration and potentially brings us one step closer to the long-held dream of establishing a sustainable human presence on Mars.”

As the saying goes, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” In this case, the first step is perhaps the most daunting, comparable only to the challenges of ensuring that changes in Mars’ climate are maintained in the long run. By offering future generations a viable and (comparatively) cost-effective option, we might achieve the dream of making Mars hospitable to terrestrial life!

*This process is known as In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), a major component of NASA’s Moon to Mars mission architecture and other plans to create a permanent human presence on the Moon and Mars in the coming decades.

Further Reading: University of Chicago News, Nature Advances

The post New Study Shows Mars Could be Terraformed Using Resources that are Already There appeared first on Universe Today.

Many people in a coma seem to think about complex tasks when instructed, which suggests they are aware of what is going on around them

The remarkable affinity of the microbial enzyme iron nitrogenase for the greenhouse gas CO2 makes it promising for future biotechnologies.

A new brain-computer interface translates brain signals into speech with up to 97 percent accuracy. Researchers implanted sensors in the brain of a man with severely impaired speech due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The man was able to communicate his intended speech within minutes of activating the system.

A new brain-computer interface translates brain signals into speech with up to 97 percent accuracy. Researchers implanted sensors in the brain of a man with severely impaired speech due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The man was able to communicate his intended speech within minutes of activating the system.

With 2D cameras and space robotics algorithms, astronautics engineers have created a navigation system able to manage multiple satellites using visual data only. They just tested it in space for the first time.

With 2D cameras and space robotics algorithms, astronautics engineers have created a navigation system able to manage multiple satellites using visual data only. They just tested it in space for the first time.

With 2D cameras and space robotics algorithms, astronautics engineers have created a navigation system able to manage multiple satellites using visual data only. They just tested it in space for the first time.

A new milestone has been set for levitated optomechanics as a group of scientists observed the Berry phase of electron spins in nano-sized diamonds levitated in vacuum.

Scientists recently discovered a one-dimensional nanoscale material whose color changes as temperature changes.

Scientists recently discovered a one-dimensional nanoscale material whose color changes as temperature changes.

A new study has found galaxies with more neighbors tend to be larger than their counterparts that have a similar shape and mass, but reside in less dense environments. The team, which used a machine-learning algorithm to analyze millions of galaxies, reports that galaxies found in denser regions of the universe are as much as 25% larger than isolated galaxies. The findings resolve a long-standing debate among astrophysicists over the relationship between a galaxy's size and its environment, but also raise new questions about how galaxies form and evolve over billions of years.

Many times, it’s better to flesh out technologies fully on Earth’s surface before they’re used in space. That is doubly true if that technology is part of the critical infrastructure keeping astronauts alive on the Moon. Since that infrastructure will undoubtedly use in-situ resources – known as in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) – developing test beds here on Earth for those ISRU processes is critical to derisking the technologies before they’re used on a mission. That’s the plan with a test bed designed by researchers at the German Aerospace Center in Bremen – they designed it to improve how well we gather water and oxygen from lunar regolith. Unfortunately, as their work described in a recent paper demonstrates, it will be a challenge to do so.

Water and oxygen are two critical components of any long-term lunar exploration plan. One of the best sources for that on the Moon, other than water ice that might only be available at specific locations, is a mineral called ilmenite. Ilmenite is a combination of iron, titanium, and oxygen—FeTiO3. It’s also the most accessible material to split into its parts using a relatively low-energy chemical reaction with elemental hydrogen as a feedstock. 

After reducing ilmenite with hydrogen, the resulting elements are iron (useful for building materials), titanium dioxide (useful for optical coatings), and water (useful for plenty of things). A further step could reduce the water to oxygen (again, useful for many things, including breathing) and hydrogen, which can be recycled back into the feedstock system for the following processing round. So, in the end, if you have ilmenite, you have access to cheap building materials, rocket fuel, and gas for breathing.

Ilmenite is also mined here on Earth – here’s a model beneficiation plant.
Credit – Christian George

Unfortunately, ilmenite is not particularly common on the lunar surface. While it is somewhat plentiful in the mare regions, it is much less so in the highlands where the first permanent lunar outposts are planned. So, explorers will need a technological solution to find more ilmenite – or at least concentrate it to levels where subjecting it to the reduction process would be energy efficient.

That’s where beneficiation comes in. It is the process of separating valuable materials, such as ilmenite, from the “chaff” that makes up most of the lunar regolith – the most easily accessible resource on the Moon. Given a lack of readily available lunar regolith, the researchers used a regolith simulant when putting their test bed through its paces. That testbed consists of three machines for three main processes: gravitational, magnetic, and electrostatic beneficiation, and the paper goes into detail about each of them.

Before any testing, the regolith simulants were dried for upwards of 48 hours at a temperature of 80 C. Afterwards, they were stored in a sealed container to prevent any additional moisture from entering the system.

Fraser talks about in-situ resource utilization – mining and beneficiating ilmenite is one way of doing so

The gravitational process uses a feeder, which is fed 300g of dried simulant for every test run, and a sieve, which separates particles that are more than 200 micrometers in size. Studies from samples collected by Apollo astronauts showed that most ilmenite grains ranged from about 45-75 micrometers, so most of the ilmenite should make it past this stage. At the same time, larger particles that could hinder the performance of the rest of the system are weeded out.

Next up is the magnetic separator – ilmenite is weakly magnetic due to its iron content and, as such, can be separated from non-magnetic material of a similar density by subjecting it to a magnetic field. The magnetic field is directed such that it would push the particles of ilmenite out of a straight line when falling, directing them into a different hopper. Non-magnetic materials of a similar size would fall directly down and be filtered out by the system.

Finally, the remaining magnetic particles are subjected to massive electric fields using an electrostatic parallel plate separator. Typically used in the oil and gas industry, these devices introduce a gigantic electric field that suspends some particles, slowing their descent and making it possible to sort out materials with specific electrical properties. Characterizing the most effective way to utilize this step was a major focal point of the study.

Isaac Arthur discusses how to mine and refine lunar resources.
Credit – Isaac Arthur YouTube Channel

After all that sifting and sorting, ideally, the users would end up with all the ilmenite in the sample and nothing else, but that doesn’t happen in practice. Realistically, some of the ilmenite present in the sample would be lost as part of the filtering process, and some non-ilmenite particles make their way to the final collection point despite all the various methods to get rid of them. 

In this experiment, the final mixture was about 12% ilmenite by weight, compared to 2.55% before it was beneficiated. The system also recovered around 32% of the total ilmenite available in the sample, and it took about half an hour to run a full 300g sample through the test bed. Further iterations could improve all those numbers – that is what test beds are for. This is only one of numerous steps that have to happen to finally make use of some of the more valuable resources on the Moon. The quicker we’re able to, the better.

Learn More:
Kulkarni et al. – Optimizing lunar regolith beneficiation for ilmenite enrichment
UT – Mysterious Swirls on the Moon Could Be Explained by Underground Magma
UT – Want to Build Structures on the Moon? Just Blast the Regolith With Microwaves
UT – It Should be Possible to Farm on the Moon

Lead Image:
Image of the test bed machine.
Credit – Kulkarni et al.

The post Researchers Developed a Test Bed For Separating Valuable Material on the Moon appeared first on Universe Today.

GPS is ubiquitous on Earth. It guides everything from precision surveying to aircraft navigation. To realize our vision of lunar exploration with a sustained human presence, we’ll need the same precision on the Moon.

That starts with an accurate clock.

The USA’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is developing a framework for the precision measurement of lunar time. They’re paving the way for lunar GPS, which could enable the type of precise position finding necessary for lunar navigation and could also contribute to future space missions.

“The proposed framework underpinning lunar coordinate time could eventually enable exploration beyond the Moon and even beyond our solar system.”

Bijunath Patla, physicist, NIST

GPS works because it measures time with extreme precision. Each GPS satellite has an atomic clock. GPS receivers receive signals from multiple GPS satellites at once and then determine their location by the time it takes to receive those signals. All Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), like the ESA’s Galileo system, work on the same principle.

Future astronauts may use a GPS-like system the same way we use them on Earth. Image Credit: The Ohio State University

But the challenge is creating a lunar GNSS that can coordinate accurately with Earthbound GNSS. Relativity is the sticking point.

Einstein’s relativity tells us that two clocks in different locations will tick at different speeds because of local gravity. An atomic clock on the surface of the Moon would tick faster than one on Earth by about 56 milliseconds per day because gravity is weaker. That’s not a big deal for consumer-level GPS. But when it comes to precision activities like landing a spacecraft, the different clock speed is a problem.

Relativity also tells us that people on Earth experience time differently than people on the Moon. Gravity effects from the Moon orbiting Earth and Earth orbiting the Sun can have a pronounced effect on navigation and communications.

The NIST’s solution to these problems is ‘Master Moon Time.’ It would set a temporal reference point for one location on the Moon, and all other locations would refer to it, similar to how the UTC works on Earth.

Earth is divided into time zones based on UTC. This image shows UTC 00:00. All other zones are offset form it. Image Credit: By Theklan – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=143021774

The Lunar Positioning System (LPS) would consist of a network of high-precision atomic clocks at various locations on the Moon. A fleet of lunar satellites would also contain atomic clocks. All of these precision clocks would provide the time signals needed for precise navigation.

Atomic clocks are precise because they’re based on the oscillations of atoms, often cesium-133, but also using elements like rubidium or hydrogen. In fact, the official definition of a second is based on the oscillation of cesium-133. Their accuracy is extreme: the most accurate ones can keep time to within one second over one billion years.

Cesium-133 clocks can be heavy compared to other types of atomic clocks, so satellites often use rubidium atomic clocks. The GPS system most commonly uses rubidium, but cesium and hydrogen clocks are used, too, depending on requirements. The ESA’s Galileo system uses both rubidium and hydrogen clocks on the same satellite, with the rubidium clocks serving as backups.

The world’s first cesium atomic clock was built at the UK National Physical Laboratory in 1955. Since then, it has been used to define the length of a second. Image: By National Physical Laboratory – http://www.npl.co.uk/upload/img/essen-experiment_1.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5543813

“It’s like having the entire Moon synchronized to one ‘time zone’ adjusted for the Moon’s gravity, rather than having clocks gradually drift out of sync with Earth’s time,” said NIST physicist Bijunath Patla.

“This work lays the foundation for adopting a navigation and timing system similar to GPS, which would serve near-Earth and Earth-bound users, for lunar exploration,” said NIST physicist Neil Ashby.

NASA and their partners in the Artemis effort intend to eventually develop a sustained presence on the Moon. There are in-situ resources there that can be used to further the effort, things like water ice and rare earth elements.

With that level of activity, the need for precision navigation is obvious. As the level of complexity in all that activity grows, the need for reliable position-finding and navigation will become acute.

“The goal is to ensure that spacecraft can land within a few meters of their intended destination,” Patla said.

Artist’s illustration of a potential Project Artemis lunar lander. Credit: NASA

The Moon will also eventually serve as a staging area or jumping-off point for missions into the Solar System. As that effort takes shape in the coming decades, precision timing will be needed to coordinate complex missions. The researchers say that atomic clocks in satellites at the Lagrange points can be used to transfer times between the Earth and the Moon.

“The proposed framework underpinning lunar coordinate time could eventually enable exploration beyond the Moon and even beyond our solar system,” Patla said. “Once humans develop the capability for such ambitious missions, of course.”

“This understanding also underpins precise navigation in cislunar space and on celestial bodies’ surfaces, thus playing a pivotal role in ensuring the interoperability of various position, navigation, and timing systems spanning from Earth to the Moon and to the farthest regions of the inner solar system,” the authors write in their paper.

The post What Time is it on the Moon? Lunar GPS Needs to Know appeared first on Universe Today.

Is it worth including activated charcoal in your terrarium’s potting mix? James Wong isn’t convinced by this pricey product

Dis-Ease by Mariam Ghani uses strong visuals and compelling interviews to argue that how we see and describe disease affects how we deal with it, says Simon Ings

Pascal Maitre's photos from the Democratic Republic of Congo detail the problems arising as demand for cobalt grows

From birds and bats to horses and great apes, Bill Schutt's seriously fun history of teeth, Bite, explains their role in both shaping evolution and our understanding of it

This week, we journey to the early 2030s, when machine learning first allowed us to communicate with sperm whales. Rowan Hooper tells us what they have to say

Over 400 years ago, Shakespeare pondered the thorny question of what was in a name. Now, Feedback considers a paper that takes on a similar topic