Ice a stepping stone to Mars?

Press, 12 September 1988, Page 9

Ice a stepping stone to Mars?

NZPA-AAP Hobart The cold, and barren environment of the dry valleys of Antarctica may help the United States put people on Mars and colonise the Moon, an environmental psychologist said today. Dr Yvonne Clearwater, of America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (N.A.S.A.), said in Hobart that the dry valleys were Earth’s nearest resemblance to Mars’ inhospitable landscape. Dr Clearwater said the dry valleys on Mars were seemingly devoid of life and characterised by dust and rocks. N.A.S.A. was therefore looking at the Antarctic as a place to test special equipment needed for manned flight to Mars and as the site for a possible research facility dedicated to space-related study. Dr Clearwater was to explain the concept of a space research facility in the Antarctic at an international meeting of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research in Hobart.

“We are interested in

the concept,” Dr Clearwater said.

“We are working now with the concept of a space simulator in the Antarctic which we would see as possibly being an internationally collaborative effort,” she said. “The beauty of doing that in a dedicated facility is you can design it like a Mars habitat or a lunar colony.”

Dr Clearwater emphasised that the facility was still a concept and not a proposal. She was part of N.A.S.A.’s Pathfinder Project which was looking at the practicalities of implementing America’s national objectives of sending a manned mission to Mars by 2015 and colonising the Moon. Asked why N.A.S.A. was bothering to simulate these conditions when it had been flying manned space missions since the 19605, Dr Clearwater said American astronauts had spent surprisingly little time in outer space. “We have sent up people for a matter of minutes to a matter of days with only one long term flight,” she said.