Researchers and astronauts gathered to address the future of human space travel at the Microsymposium 55 conference held in Texas March 15 and 16.
The conference featured speakers from the University, Russia’s Vernadsky Institute and the Brown-MIT NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute.
Conference discussions centered around SSERVI’s four targets for future space exploration — near-Earth asteroids, the moon, Mars and the two moons of Mars — Phobos and Deimos.
“The whole idea of this conference was to help prepare what the scientific goals of future exploration would be,” said Professor of Geological Sciences James Head, PhD ’69 P’90, one of the organizers of the conference. “That’s why we had sessions on each of these individual destinations.”
Rather than getting caught up in the detailed scientific discoveries that each destination could offer, the conference dealt with the larger picture, Head said.
“It was really new information presented in a synthesis manner that provided clear goals for space exploration,” he said. The next goal “is to demonstrate human capability by visiting a near-Earth asteroid,” Head added.
Researchers at the conference addressed whether to focus on sending humans back to the moon or exploringnear-Earth asteroids, he said.
Visiting the moon is important because astronauts can train there for the future explorations, he added.
But due to funding concerns, it is unclear where future explorations will be targeted, wrote Clark Chapman, senior scientist at Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, in an email to The Herald.
Chapman wrote that he gave a talk on the specific scientific issues that will need to resolved before humans may be able to land on near-Earth asteroids.
“If you look at the history of major discoveries, it has to do with exploration,” Head said. “It’s tremendously exciting and important.”
During the conference, Head addressed the tradeoffs between robotic and human space travel. “It’s a partnership really, and the question is how to optimize,” Head said. Both have advantages that when paired together would make space exploration more efficient.
Robots can be used to do tasks such as repairing technology so that humans can focus their time on other matters, he said.
Humans have the ability to analyze their surroundings and make decisions quickly when they are on the space body themselves, he added. It takes time for robots to send information back for huamns to analyze on Earth.
Robots are also limited in the places they can travel, Head said. For example, a big rover would not be able to navigate a narrow valley a few hundred meters deep, while humans could.
The conference also featured “enthusiastic discussions by young people working toward future exploration in space,” Chapman wrote.
The NextGen Lunar Scientists and Engineers — a group that aims to encourage younger generations of scientists to be involved in planning future space missions — also attended the conference, wrote Ryan Clegg, a graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis, who is part of the group and who spoke at the conference, in an email to The Herald. Clegg and her co-member Sarah North-Valencia gave a talk at the conference stressing the “importance of keeping the moon at the forefront of discussion as a future destination.”
“We need to bridge the gap between our generation and the Apollo generation,” Clegg wrote.
ADVERTISEMENT
