{"id":20700,"date":"2022-04-27T10:42:40","date_gmt":"2022-04-27T09:42:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/?p=20700"},"modified":"2022-04-27T10:44:37","modified_gmt":"2022-04-27T09:44:37","slug":"solar-energy-used-power-crewed-mission-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/solar-energy-used-power-crewed-mission-mars\/20700\/","title":{"rendered":"Solar energy could be used to power a crewed mission to Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"
It can be argued that no other planet in our Solar System<\/a> has sparked human interest and imagination more than Mars. While modern science has debunked the Red Planet as a likely source of an alien invasion, today\u2019s technology is bringing us closer to a crewed mission. A research team out of the University of California, Berkeley,<\/a> published a paper in the journal<\/span>\u202fFrontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, <\/span><\/i>that argues that a crewed mission to Mars\u2019 surface could be powered by harvesting solar energy.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This is not a novel concept, as the main source of power for a number of NASA Mars rovers originates from a multi-panel solar array. However, in the last decade, the majority of people had assumed that nuclear power would be a better option than solar energy for human missions to Mars, according to co-lead author Aaron Berliner, a bioengineering graduate student in the Arkin Laboratory at UC Berkeley.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n What makes this current study unique is how the researchers compared various ways to generate power. The calculations took into account the amount of equipment mass that would be required to be transported from Earth to the Martian surface for a six-person mission to Mars. Specifically, they quantified the requirements of a nuclear-powered system against different photovoltaic and even photoelectrochemical devices.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n While the energy output of a miniaturised nuclear fission device is location-agnostic, the productivity of solar-powered solutions relies on solar intensity and surface temperature, among<\/span>st<\/span> other factors that would determine where a non-nuclear outpost would be optimally located. This required modelling and accounting for a number of factors, such as how gasses and particles in the atmosphere might absorb and scatter light, which would affect the amount of solar radiation at the planet\u2019s surface.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The most successful avenue was using a photovoltaic array that utilises compressed hydrogen for energy storage. At the equator, what the researchers labelled the \u2018carry-along mass\u2019 of such a system is about 8.3 tons versus a<\/span>pproximately <\/span><\/span><\/span>9.5 tons for nuclear power. The solar-based <\/span>energy <\/span>system becomes less tenable closer to the equator at more than 22 tons<\/span>, <\/span><\/span>yet <\/span><\/span><\/span>it exceeds<\/span><\/span><\/span> o<\/span><\/span><\/span>ver<\/span><\/span><\/span> fission energy across <\/span><\/span><\/span>about <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>an estimated <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>50% of the Martian surface.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI think it is nice that the result was split pretty close down the middle,\u201d Berliner explained. \u201cNearer the equator, solar wins out; nearer the poles, nuclear wins.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Such a system can employ electricity to split water molecules to produce hydrogen, which can be stored in pressurised vessels and then re-electrified in fuel cells for power. Other applications for hydrogen include combining it with nitrogen to produce ammonia for fertili<\/span>s<\/span>ers \u2013 a common industrial-scale process.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Other technologies, such as water electrolysis to produce hydrogen and hydrogen fuel cells, are less common on Earth, largely due to costs, but are potentially game-changing for a human mission to Mars.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cCompressed hydrogen energy storage falls into this category as well,\u201d noted co-lead author Anthony Abel, a chemical and biomolecular engineering PhD student at UC Berkeley. \u201cFor grid-scale energy storage, it\u2019s not used commonly, although that is projected to change in the next decade.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nComparing different methods to generate power<\/h3>\n
Solar based energy system<\/h3>\n
Space exploration and achieving a mission to Mars<\/h3>\n