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UND Space Studies launches fifth “Mars” mission with physician aboard

The mission crew, from left to right: biomechanical engineering student Nelio Nascimento; mission commander and Space Studies grad student Prabhu Victor; and Michael Castro, a physician from Florida and the mission’s medical officer. Juan Pedraza/UND image
The mission crew, from left to right: biomechanical engineering student Nelio Nascimento; mission commander and Space Studies grad student Prabhu Victor; and Michael Castro, a physician from Florida and the mission’s medical officer. Juan Pedraza/UND image

A team of three volunteers climbed aboard the University of North Dakota’s Inflatable Lunar Mars Habitat (ILMH) Wednesday for the unit’s fifth NASA-funded “space” mission. It’s scheduled to last 14 days.

The crew comprises mission commander Prabhu Victor, a UND alum and current Space Studies graduate student; Nelio Nascimento, an undergraduate in biomedical engineering at UND and an international student from Brazil; and Michael Castro, MD, a physician from Florida who volunteered to be the mission’s medical officer.

“This habitat is the only system of its kind in the nation on a college campus,” said Pablo de León, an Argentine aerospace engineer and faculty member in Space Studies. He’s also director of the UND Human Spaceflight Laboratory. De Leon noted that the project is funded by the North Dakota-NASA EPSCoR grant.

The ILMH project attracts students from around the world to join this prestigious scientific effort. Students are largely responsible for constructing, assembling, and maintaining the ILMH.

“This mission is focused on unknown medical aspects of long-duration spaceflight,” said de Leon, a well-known designer of innovative suits built specifically for planetary exploration. “This is the first of our five missions so far to include a physician. Among other things, Dr. Castro is going to research the dynamics of the suit we’ve designed specifically for extra-vehicular activities, or EVA. We’re part of a major NASA push to create the reservoir of medical knowledge essential for safe long-duration spaceflight.”

“We’re looking to develop a lot of data from this mission,” said de Leon, who recently traveled to NASA’s Houston facility for an annual meeting of scientists and engineers preparing for the agency’s long-duration flights to the moon and to Mars.

This mission is scheduled to conclude May 14—the crew exit time will be announced closer to the mission end date.

The ILMH complex is located on several acres of grassed land across I-29 from the University.

The heavy-duty fabricating and welding of all aluminum infrastructure was done locally by Grand Forks Welding, which delivered the final plastic-sheeting wrapped unit to the ILMH last June. The company now is working on the final girders and other joining structures that will unite all five modules, which are configured like an actual Mars base—a living module; an extra-vehicular activity (EVA) and maintenance module; a plant production module; an exercise and human performance module; and a geology module.

On this mission, as in previous missions, the crew will grow and harvest a lot of food such as lettuces.

The core of this five unit project is the living module, where crew will spend a good portion of their time.

The EVA and maintenance module is the workshop where the crew will perform both routine and emergency repairs and maintenance on suits, modules, rovers and other equipment.

The plant production module is all about feeding the crew—of course, this means a plant-based diet. No room for meat animals.

The plant production module will house trays of plants under LED lights specially designed by NASA.

The exercise and human performance module will house special exercise machines with systems that will feed information to NASA; the agency will be able to perform real-time monitoring of the health status of persons in the module.

The geology module is for experiments and for developing techniques for cutting Martian rocks that may contain contaminants such as toxic perchlorates that should not be inhaled—particulates could be released as the rocks are gathered and cut, so the crew must process samples in a glove box.

All the modules are connected with aluminum-framed tunnels, already built and ready to be hooked up at the site.

UND is one of a few facilities funded by NASA to test long-duration Mars conditions, said de León.

“We have the talent pool, the facilities, the environment and climate that provide an optimum place to test the extreme technologies needed for such a hostile place as Mars,” de León noted during a previous mission.

“We collaborate with other universities and NASA centers on long-duration missions to actually test different technologies, systems and equipment that will facilitate our travel to, and stay on, Mars,” he said.

–Juan Pedraza, Division of Research & Economic Development