Extravehicular Activities for Mars Exploration

Title

Extravehicular Activities for Mars Exploration

Authors

Pablo de León

Files

Description

Extravehicular activity is one of the most critical areas for planetary exploration. On Mars, due to gravity conditions, dust contamination and a specific thermal scenario, a special kind of suit is required to protect the astronauts. Since 2005 the Department of Space Studies at UND has been researching in the area of planetary space suit systems and developed the NDX-1 a Mars suit demonstrator which was tested on Earth under analog conditions.

As a result of these studies new developments are taking place and a series of design improvements have been done to prepare a suit that can cope with the Mars conditions. Since a space suit is just part of the extravehicular system, an integrated design of the mission contemplating all different aspects of the tasks to accomplish, is required. A new NASA grant is allowing the Department of Space Studies to develop a complete minimal mission scenario including inflatable habitat, airlocks, rovers and space suit, to attempt to address all the different problems related to a human mission to Mars.

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Publication Date

2-22-2010

City

Grand Forks, ND

Extravehicular Activities for Mars Exploration

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