Cartoon illustration. Credit: Christine Daniloff/MIT
Fueling up on the moon could lighten cargo by 68% on the journey to Mars. Previous studies have suggested that lunar soil and water ice in certain craters of the moon may be mined and converted to fuel.
The group developed a model to determine the best route to Mars, assuming availability of resources and fuel-generating infrastructure on the moon. They found the most mass-efficient path involves launching a crew from Earth with just enough fuel to get into orbit around Earth. A fuel-producing plant on the surface of the moon would then launch tankers of fuel into space, where they would enter gravitational orbit. The tankers would eventually be picked up by the Mars-bound crew, which would then head to a nearby fueling station to gas up before ultimately heading to Mars.
Olivier de Weck, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and of engineering systems at MIT, says the plan deviates from NASA’s more direct “carry-along” route. The results are based on the PhD thesis of Takuto Ishimatsu, now a postdoc.
In the past, space exploration programs have adopted 2 main strategies: a carry-along approach, where all vehicles and resources travel with the crew at all times – as on the Apollo missions to the moon – and a “resupply strategy,” in which resources are replenished regularly, eg spaceflights to ISS. Beyond Earth’s orbit, such strategies may not be sustainable.
Missions to Mars and other distant destinations may benefit from a supply strategy that hinges on “in-situ resource utilization” -the idea that resources such as fuel, and provisions such as water and oxygen, may be produced and collected along the route of space exploration. Materials produced in space would replace those that would otherwise be transported from Earth.
eg water ice – which could potentially be mined and processed into rocket fuel – has been found on both Mars and the moon.
The model assumes that fuel depots can be located at certain gravitationally bound locations in space, called Lagrange points. Given a mission objective, such as a set of weight restrictions, the model identifies the best route in the supply network, while also satisfying the constraints of basic physics.
“The optimization suggests that the moon could play a major role in getting us to Mars repeatedly and sustainably,” de Weck adds. “People have hinted at that before, but we think this is the first definitive paper that shows mathematically why that’s the right answer.” http://news.mit.edu/2015/mars-mission-save-weight-fuel-on-moon-1015
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