The Egyptians and the civilizations of Mesopotamia were the first in the Western half of the world to document time by the movement of the Moon, Earth, and Sun. They created a 12-month year. In China, similar calculations led to a similar conclusion. Lunar calendars were given intercalary extra months to align them with the solar year.

The Julian calendar based on Earth’s annual orbit around the Sun was adopted by the Romans. It superseded the lunar calendars of older cultures. Eventually, the Julian went through a realignment to become the Gregorian calendar which was adopted in Europe in 1582. Russia stuck with the Julian calendar until recently. China adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1912 although it still observes the lunar calendar traditions.

Where Islam is the predominant religion, the lunar calendar remains how people mark time. The Islamic or Hijri calendar consists of 12 months of 29 or 30 days. It does not insert intercalary months which means that observed holidays and festivals change from year to year. I have often felt for Muslim friends when the daytime fasting month of Ramadan falls in the Northern Hemisphere when days marked by sunrise and sunset are long.

In the past, there was at least one effort to reconcile the calendar more logically than the nursery rhyme:

Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November;
All the rest have thirty-one,
Excepting February alone.
Which only has but twenty-eight days clear
And twenty-nine in each leap year.

The most notable alternate dating system was adopted in 1793 by the French revolutionary government based on a more rational and scientific system not dependent on Christian religious practice. The new 12-month calendar set the start date to coincide with the Gregorian calendar’s October 5th, 1793. It marked Year 1 in the new month of Vendémiaire. Each of the newly named months was 30 days. Instead of weeks, the French adopted three 10-day décades per month. The year-end included five or six supplementary days, the latter to account for the extra Leap Day.

We are tied to celestial timekeepers with their roots determined by observations that go way back in time.

The Sun’s daily cycle marks the progression of day to night. Our first clocks were sundials.

Our 7-day weeks correspond to the phases of the moon from new to waxing crescent to full to waning crescent.

Our Earth’s rotation marks the days which are based on ancient Mesopotamian, actually Sumerian, observations that used the number 6 to divide a year lasting 360 days into 12, 30-day segments. This sexagesimal system produced how we mark time with 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 4 six-hour segments to mark the passing of each day. Our clocks and watches to this day are all 6-based.

“Here’s a startling fact: most of the universe is missing. The stuff that we are made of and, for that matter, everything else we can see on Earth and also the stars, only makes up around 5% of the universe.”

So what is and where is the other 95%? That stuff that is matter has been called Dark Matter. Do we call it Dark Matter because our vision limitations make it impossible for us to see it? Can any living species on Earth when looking at the stars see Dark Matter? The answer to both questions is “No!”

So what is Dark Matter?

Dark Matter

The Dark Matter makes up 27% of the Universe. The rest is defined by another term, Dark Energy, which we have yet to detect. I promise to post the latest research on Dark Energy soon on this web site.

Getting back to Dark Matter, it remains invisible to us because it weakly interacts with the light we see. The light we cannot see, called the electromagnetic spectrum, includes infrared (IR) and ultraviolet (UV). Dark Matter is invisible to both IR and UV light as well.

We can’t see it, yet Dark Matter has been called the invisible glue that holds the cosmos together. First hypothesized in 1933, its existence was confirmed four decades later when calculations indicated that the galaxy’s visible stars typically represented about 10% of the mass required to keep them orbiting its centre. The term given for the unaccounted-for mass that produced no light was Dark Matter.

Today, astrophysicists, astronomers and cosmologists believe that since the Big Bang, it has been Dark Matter that has gathered the stars to make galaxies. It is Dark Matter that provides the infrastructure for the observable Universe.

So how can we see Dark Matter? Maybe, “see” is the wrong word. The word we should use is “infer.” Astronomers use several observational and mathematical tools to infer the existence of Dark Matter. These include:

• The observed distortions in visible light caused by gravitational lensing from distant galaxies infer the existence of Dark Matter. Using the distortions, astronomers can map where Dark Matter is distributed throughout the Universe.
• Plotting galaxy rotation curves to measure the speed of stars rotating around a galaxy. For most galaxies, there is a steep rise in the rotation curve near the galactic centre with a flattening as the mass decreases towards the outer edges. An unexpected result in the plot of the curve infers Dark Matter is present.
• When galaxies collide the observed interactions of stars and the gravitational forces holding the galaxies together infer the presence of Dark Matter.

Can Dark Matter interact with Visible Matter? Such interactions appear to be extremely rare, but should they happen, scientists believe we should see something measurable. They have divined two different strategies in the hope they can detect Dark Matter in collision with Visible Matter.

• The first involves placing sensitive detectors in deep mines to capture these collisions looking for sparks, possibly gamma rays.
• The second strategy is to smash protons together using the Large Hadron Collider at CERN to detect Dark Matter particles in the aftermath of the collisions.

The Cosmic Web

Studying the interrelationship between galaxies and galaxy clusters has led to the discovery of filaments and threads that bind the Universe together. A recent James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) image showed 10 galaxies that came into existence just 830 million years after the Big Bang. They were connected by filaments which have now been observed across the Universe. This is what is now called the Cosmic Web.

The Cosmic Web is believed to be the largest structure in the Universe measuring an estimated 10 billion light-years across. The Web contains galaxies and galaxy clusters joined together by long and thin interconnecting filaments and other structures called walls and nodes.

In studying the Cosmic Web astronomers at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea observed recently Dark Matter astride Cosmic Web filaments. This was a first. It is now believed that Dark Matter will be found dangling from Cosmic Web filaments throughout the Universe. No longer is Dark Matter inferred. We now can detect and “see” it as a component of Cosmic Web filaments.

The results of the Yonsei University observations were published in Nature Astronomy on January 5, 2024.

Life on Earth came out of water. When searching for life in the Universe, we look for water and carbon. Where these two coexist, the chances for life seem possible. That’s why finding water, even the frozen type gets exobiologists excited.

Satellites, landers and rovers have all visited Mars. One of these is the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express which is entering its third decade of service giving us pictures and data from its onboard cameras and sensors. The Mars Express tells the story of the state of water both on and below the surface of the planet.

Its images and data point to the planet’s wetter past showing dried-up riverbeds and deltas. Mars Express has discovered a subsurface ocean of liquid water and large ice deposits beneath the planet’s red and dusty regolith. The latest water discovery is a large body of ice buried at the planet’s equator. The amount is so voluminous, that if it were to melt, the water would fill Earth’s Red Sea.

Mars Express has flown over this equatorial area of the planet in the past and imaged its surface features which ESA scientists now believe indicate the presence of water ice in vast amounts stretching as much as 3.7 kilometres underground. The amount is greater than what can be found at Mars’ two polar ice caps.

The location is the Medusae Fossae Formation (MFF) appearing near the centre of the image of Mars below. States Thomas Watters of the Smithsonian Institution in the United States, “Excitingly, the radar signals match what we’d expect to see from layered ice, and are similar to the signals we see from Mars’s polar caps, which we know to be very ice-rich.”

The key to making Starlink coverage work comes with the number of satellites SpaceX has put into orbit and the ones it plans to add. As of last month, more than 5,500 were circling the planet. Global coverage will require approximately 6,500 more.

SpaceX eventually wants its constellation to grow to 42,000 with a variety of satellite types to provide different levels of service. Some of the satellites will be deployed using a higher level of security to meet U.S. military requirements. It was recently tested in the Arctic and is being called Starshield.

The closest parallel to Starlink, before it arrived, was the deployment of geostationary satellites to beam television signals to homes equipped with dishes. Satellite TV uses satellites placed in geosynchronous orbit. Geosynchronous orbits are at a distance where the satellite travels at a speed that aligns with the rotation of the planet to make it appear stationary. Starlink satellites orbit at much lower levels and do not maintain the same positional orientation as receivers on the ground. With Starlink, a signal sent to it is shared by the next satellite to provide a continuous connection.

Starlink doesn’t have one type of satellite. Concern by astronomers has led to cosmetic changes to make the satellites dark against the night sky. The astronomers were complaining that the satellites were interfering with the night viewing of stars and planets.

Recently, Starlink developed two new satellite versions with the designation V2 (not to be confused with Nazi Germany’s V2 rockets which were used to bomb London in World War Two). The two versions are designated large and mini. The former has yet to be deployed because it has been designed for future launches on SpaceX’s Starship. The other is called the V2 Mini. But it is far from small being three times heavier at 800 kilograms (1,760 pounds) compared to prior Starlink satellites. The V2 Mini provides faster feeds and speeds to improve network performance which has started to experience slowdowns as more customers sign up.

The V2 Mini series has decreased the number of satellites that each Falcon 9 can put into orbit. Where 60 of the older Starlink satellites at a time could be put into orbit. Now, each Falcon 9 flight carries a maximum of 21.

How Calling Works with Starlink Currently and in the Future

How calling on Starlink works today is similar to placing a phone call using your home WiFi network and an app like WhatsApp. This type of connection is called Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP). If you are too far from the WiFi router, the phone call will not connect. If away from your home network you are not able to make direct phone calls using the Starlink network unless doing it from another Starlink-connected location with shared network access.

That’s about to change if the current Federal Communications Commission (FCC) pilot project passes muster. The goal is to provide direct-to-cellular communications between everyday cellular phones and the second generation of Starlink satellites. The current trials involve 840 satellites with direct-to-cellular payloads with approximately 60 serving handsets in the United States. The U.S. carrier, T-Mobile is the testbed.

In October, Starlink began to advertise a Direct-to-Cell phone service providing voice and text in 2024 and data services in 2025. It intends to expand coverage to include carriers in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland and Japan.

Current U.S. carriers other than T-Mobile have been filing complaints with the FCC about direct-to-cell service stating it could disrupt ground-based wireless connections that use land-based cellular towers.

The V2 Mini satellites are the ones supporting the Direct-to-Cell pilot project. Each is equipped with an advanced eNodeB modem that acts like a cellphone tower located in space which allows for network integration similar to standard roaming, a feature of land-based telecommunications networks. The concern expressed by carriers other than T-Mobile is that the antennas onboard the V2 Minis could transmit and receive calls that interfere when placed in proximity to land-based cellphone towers operated by other phone and Internet providers. The pilot is scheduled to last 180 days and should prove or refute this concern.

The Implications of Direct-to-Cell Telecommunications

If telecommunications can be liberated from being tied to land-based networks, it means uninterrupted coverage over the entire planet for not just cell phones but also Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. It means access from anywhere including remote locations where currently there is no cellular coverage.

Is this new? No. The Iridium network uses its satellites and 400,000-plus specialized handsets to serve its customers. But what Starlink is providing does away with the need for an expensive second cellphone.

Considering the ubiquitous use of inexpensive smart cellphones today amounting to close to 6 billion, Starlink Direct-to-Cell will be as revolutionary as the first deployed terrestrial cellphone network was in Japan back in 1979.

When Cassini rendezvoused with Enceladus it discovered venting from the moon’s southern polar region back in 2005. Three subsequent passes happening from 2008 to 2009 confirmed that this wasn’t a one-time event. As the spacecraft flew through the ejected material, the onboard Cosmic Dust Analyzer analyzed the content. The plumes contained fine grains of ice and water vapour. The ice particles hit the spacecraft at speeds of between 6.5 and 17.5 kilometres (4 to 10.8 miles) per second. As they struck the ice vaporized. Electrical fields in the analyzer separated the chemical constituents.

What they found was that the composition was water. Enceladus was spewing liquid water with some of it freezing as it escaped from under the icy crust into the immediate space above the moon’s surface. Similar icy particles were found in Saturn’s E-ring, the faintest of the planet’s fabled rings, but also its most extensive. Scientists believe Enceladus is the source of much of the material populating the E-ring.

But it wasn’t just the icy particles and water vapour that was fascinating to the scientists following Cassini. In the water, they found organic compounds, the ingredients for amino acids which on Earth are believed to have been the precursors in the emergence of life. The chemistry in the water plumes venting from Enceladus included molecular compounds containing nitrogen and oxygen.

On Earth, we find similar compounds coming from ocean-floor hydrothermal vents. The speculation led scientists to believe Enceladus had an ocean beneath its icy crust with similar features to the hydrothermal vents on Earth. The analysis of the composition of the icy surfaces near where the venting is taking place on the moon indicates soluble organic compounds.

So what is likely happening on Enceladus, the whitest and brightest object in the Solar System, and the sixth largest moon in the Saturnian system, spanning 500 kilometres (310 miles) in diameter? How could such a tiny moon have so much going on beneath its surface? The little moon is so bright and white that it reflects more than 70% of the very diminished sunlight that reaches its surface.

The spectrometric readings from Cassini showed that the energy being produced at the moon’s south polar region was equivalent to 15.8 Gigawatts here on Earth. That is 2.6 times greater than all the hot springs and geysers at Yellowstone.

Enceladus’ composition includes an ice crust, an ocean below, and a rocky core. The heat energy Cassini measured is produced by a combination of radioactive decay from the moon’s core along with tidal forces exerted on it by Saturn and neighbouring moons. That heat energy causes the water to expand which then cracks through the icy surface and vents into space at a rate of 200 kilograms (441 pounds) per second.

So what we already know before I add another Enceladus surprise to the mix, is that the moon has water, organic compounds, amino acids, and sufficient heat to keep that water from freezing. These are all preconditions to the emergence of life here on Earth.

What’s the newest finding? In a paper appearing on December 14, 2023, in Nature Astronomy, scientists revealed that they have found hydrogen cyanide. This discovery has exobiologists excited because it is considered an essential molecule, the Swiss army knife of amino acid precursors. The interaction of hydrogen cyanide and water produces a starting reactant that is seen to have lead to the precursors of RNA and proteins. The hydrogen cyanide, therefore states the paper, could indicate the ability to “support extant microbial communities or drive complex organic synthesis leading to the origin of life.” 

In other words, all the chemistry needed for life has been found on this little moon. It doesn’t mean life exists on Enceladus, but it sure makes it intriguing enough to consider a return to the moon with an orbiter and lander at sometime in the future.

The 14 companies chosen for the LunA-10 project are tasked with the design and development of solutions to address power requirements and delivery, resource utilization, communications, navigation, transportation, logistics, construction and robotics.

DARPA is working within the framework of NASA’s Artemis Accords. The model that NASA has cultivated includes using trusted industry partners with the task of creating the lunar technologies and capabilities necessary for a permanent presence on the Moon’s surface and surrounds. Future astronauts, scientists, engineers and others who go to the Moon will find a self-sustaining lunar infrastructure. The DARPA plan intends to foster competing solutions to achieve the same results, a planned redundancy.

The South Pole is the best place to establish a permanent lunar presence. A waystation in permanent cislunar orbit will serve to support the activity on the Moon. A communication and power delivery system will connect those on the Moon’s surface, in cislunar orbit, and back here on Earth.

The companies selected include Blue Origin, CisLunar Industries, Crescent Space Services LLC, Fibertek, Inc., Firefly Aerospace, GITAI, Helios, Honeybee Robotics, ICON, Nokia of America, Northrop Grumman, Redwire Corporation, Sierra Space and SpaceX. Some of these companies are familiar names. Others less so.

Michael Nayak, Program Manager for DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office, in a press release, describes the LunA-10 aim “to facilitate the fusing and co-optimization of as many infrastructure sectors as possible, into key nodes that can be scaled up in the future…Imagine a wireless power station that can also provide comms and navigation in its beam…to support a thriving commercial economy on the Moon.”

The named companies will work together to combine their expertise and provide a statement of progress in a meeting planned for April 2024. This will be followed by a report to be delivered in June 2024.

Several lesser-known companies chosen for LunA-10 will be providing critical components for the development of a permanent human presence on and around the Moon. Here are some of the companies selected that may be less familiar to you and the expertise they are bringing to the development of a comprehensive lunar infrastructure.

• CisLunar Industries‘ CEO, Gary Calnan noted “DARPA finally did what the industry was waiting for…bringing together 14 companies representing complementary parts of the future lunar economy…where the entire space domain can participate.” CisLunar will use its knowledge to develop METAL (Material Extraction, Treatment, Assembly and Logistics), a framework for providing in-situ material resources and robotics to build lunar infrastructure.
• Crescent Space Services LLC, a new company created by Lockheed Martin will provide infrastructure-as-a-service to support lunar missions. States CEO, Joe Landon, the company “is well positioned to serve the upcoming wave of lunar science and exploration missions” through leveraging the expertise and resources of its parent.
• Fibertek, Inc., in Virginia, is a leading-edge company focused on laser and electro-optics research. It brings bi-directional laser communication systems to LunA-10 to be deployed in cislunar space and on the Moon.
• Firefly Aerospace, located in Cedar Park, Texas, describes itself as an end-to-end space transportation company. In a separate press release about LunA-10, CEO, Bill Weber, states, “We’ve identified a path to drastically improve on-orbit mission response times from years to days with scalable spacecraft hubs that can host and service spacecraft across cislunar space.” The company will contribute a framework for an in-orbit hub that would house propellant, warehouse payloads, share power and provide communication resources. Different spacecraft will be able to dock with the hub in support of serving the habitat and lunar surface expedition needs.
• GITAI will build and deploy its multi-purpose Inchworm robots to handle the various tasks of constructing and maintaining the lunar habitat. States Sho Nakanose, CEO, “This mission goes well beyond robotics; it’s about forging a new era of lunar infrastructure. Our innovative approach, leveraging modular robotics, is a catalyst for reshaping how we envision the moon.”
• Helios is an Israel-based technology startup with proprietary technology designed to mine oxygen from the Moon’s regolith.
• Honeybee Robotics is Brooklyn, New York-based and will develop and integrate LUNARSABER, a structure that provides solar power, power storage and transfer, communications, a mesh network, positioning, navigation and timing, and surveillance in a 100-metre (330 feet) mast. During the lunar night, it will illuminate the habitat and its surroundings.
• ICON, an Austin, Texas company is focused on large-scale 3D printing for construction. It will be tasked with developing space-based construction systems using 3D printing.
• Redwire, a Jacksonville, Florida company, will provide critical services from cislunar space including high-speed communications and Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) through a constellation of Moon-orbiting platforms. Redwire has developed a prototype technology that would create roads and landing pads on the Moon. It also has developed a roll-out solar array that will provide power to the lunar habitat and other infrastructure. States Al Tadros, Chief Technology Officer, “Our experience working to develop lunar infrastructure technology, from RF systems to regolith processing, to in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing, puts us on the front lines of building a vibrant economy on the Moon and beyond.”

I have not summarized the roles that Blue Origin, Nokia, Northrop Grumman, Sierra Space and SpaceX are expected to play in LunA-10. These companies are better known than the ones I chose to write about above. It should be a very interesting meeting next April when these companies meet up to compare notes.

Meanwhile, the timing of the first Artemis mission to land on the Moon keeps slipping further into the future. Why? Because developing technology for space is not easy and when you are dealing with so many moving parts, if one of the suppliers runs into problems, then the entire mission’s timeline gets disrupted. The biggest impediment right now is coming from SpaceX, the company chosen to provide the first lunar lander, the Starship HLS (Human Landing System). A variant of Starship which has yet to successfully achieve orbit and prove its spaceworthiness, everything hinges on getting it to space along with the supporting infrastructure to prove the technology.

It is likely that within the next two decades, the first human explorers will land on Mars. For humans to survive on the Red Planet, however, it will require more than sending us. We don’t exist in isolation here on Earth and likely cannot survive on Mars without the accompaniment of many friends from our planet. Those friends include plants, bacteria and insects.

Simulating Mars

Researchers have simulated Martian soil, atmosphere and light conditions to see if Earth-based plants can survive there. But Martian gardens will not thrive without others to help. The plants will need living things that inhabit Earth’s subsurfaces as well as some that live above the ground.

Plants on Earth need pollinators. Plants on Mars will need the same. If not insects, then human settlers will need a suitable substitute.

NASA recognizes the challenge and along with the Canadian Space Agency has launched the Deep Space Food Challenge. Its focus is to come up with new food production technologies or systems for prolonged missions beyond Earth.

The environment of Mars is not Earth-plant-friendly. The atmosphere is extremely thin and mostly carbon dioxide (CO2). Since plants take in CO2, this would seem to be an advantage. But CO2 from ambient Martian air because it is so thin would be minimal.

The Martian surface lacks any protection from incoming solar and cosmic rays because the planet’s magnetosphere is almost non-existent.

Soil toxicity presents further challenges. Landers and rovers on Mars that have sampled the regolith indicate high concentrations of perchlorate compounds which are incompatible with most plant life.

Plants could indeed be grown in Earth-simulating greenhouses, but the infrastructure requirements to build and maintain them would add significantly to settlement costs.

Bacteria Could be a Game Changer

Could Martian soil be conditioned to be plant-friendly? Several species of DPRB bacteria found on Earth tolerate perchlorate. One, Dechloromonosand Azospirause, converts perchlorate into energy molecules and releases chloride and oxygen as waste.

The Chinese space program has experimented with growing plants in simulated lunar soil with some success. They introduced three bacteria, Bacillus mucilaginosus, Bacillus megaterium and Pseudomonas fluorescens. All are phosphorus-solubilizing and allowed the Chinese researchers to grow Benthi, a tobacco plant relative. Could similar results be produced on Mars? If we were to transplant these Earth-based bacteria to Mars, would they be changed and evolve when exposed to space and then the Red Planet?

Fertilizers and Pollinators

Another way for Martian soils to become Earth-plant-friendly is through the application of fertilizers. Fertilizers made using sodium molybdate, and molybdenum-bipyridine complex when combined with a hydrogen-activating catalyst made of palladium on carbon would turn perchlorate into water, a welcome outcome for both plants and human settlements.

And what about pollinators? On Earth, insects provide that essential service to help plants propagate. Could we bring bees to Mars to sustain our plants? Bees have been studied on the International Space Station. They don’t like living there. Mars could be equally hostile.

Could another insect friend be a good pollinator substitute, in fact, a friend with added benefits? A recent New York Times article by Sarah Scoles entitled “Mars Needs Insects,” describes introducing the Black Soldier Fly (seen below) to the Martian environment.

The fly could serve three purposes. It could be a pollinator. Its larvae could consume human waste produced by the settlers which would further condition the soil for growing plants.

And the fly could even be a food source. The Canadian government recently invested in a facility to grow Black Soldier Flies for sustainable agriculture use. The plan is to use the larvae as animal feed. It is protein-rich and tastes like nuts. If presented properly, Black Soldier Fly could be the next “beef” patty.

Humans in Deep Space Need Environmental Independence

NASA’s Biological and Physical Sciences Division has recommended a new program called BLiSS which stands for Bioregenerative Life Support Systems. The goal is to build sustainable environments independent of Earth. These would be capable of supplying all their food, water, and air needs. They would be circular environments with nothing going to waste.

The Black Soldier Fly right now sounds like the perfect companion to create such environments. It would pollinate the plants, consume human waste, fertilize the soil, and be a food source. They along with various bacteria will be the friends we need to make Mars a second home. Without them or similar friends coming along for the ride, our species will never become interplanetary.

This is how SpaceX advances the technology. Unlike NASA which spends billions of dollars on carefully planned and executed projects to obtain a perfect liftoff and mission, SpaceX builds, tests and breaks hardware regularly, learning from each blow-up what needs to be fixed and improved. Starship and its heavy first-stage booster have seen multiple generations already and likely will see many more to iron out all the engineering issues until success is achieved. Is this a faster process than NASA’s approach? As of yet, it is hard to tell.

Another SpaceX differentiator comes from the mind of its founder, Elon Musk. Musk created SpaceX to save humanity from an extinction-level event here on Earth. His goal from the start has been to put a city on Mars and make humanity the first multi-planet species.

We may not be the first to go multi-planet when you think of the origins of life here on Earth. Although we have yet to find Martian life, or for that matter life elsewhere in the Solar System, panspermia, an origin theory hypothesizes that life on Earth came from elsewhere. We may already, therefore, be descendants of Martians who evolved more than 4 billion years ago, or Venusians from the same period, before the latter planet turned into a runaway greenhouse.

Musk’s ambition is to create a city of a million on Mars by the end of this century. That’s a lot of mouths to feed which brings me to the headline of this posting and what many consider the biggest impediment to Musk’s vision of sending humans to the Red Planet.

A Martian Mission Will Need Lots of Food

What will that first mission entail besides the rocket and the Starship with an environment capable of sustaining life for a close to six-month voyage to get to Mars and then after while on the planet, and for the return trip? Food.

At the Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology, University of Agricultural Sciences in India, Rajkumar Hassamani told the Al Jazeera network, that for a three-year mission to Mars, a crew of four would need up to 12 thousand kilograms (26,400 pounds) of food.

The payload capacity of a Starship travelling to Mars is estimated to be 450 metric tons (990,000 pounds). The fuel needed to make the journey will weigh 1,200 metric tons (2,600,000 pounds). Additional payload includes the crew, life support and food.

Nothing humans have ever launched into space approaches these numbers other than the International Space Station (ISS) which upon completion after 30 missions and 10 years weighs 420 metric tons (925,000 pounds).

When comparing maintaining a crew on the ISS versus one going to Mars and back, the food issue becomes a stark reality. Regular supply runs from Earth provide food to the ISS. Most of the food comes in packaged meals. In addition, ISS crews have been experimenting to grow food with some success adding to the packaged food they normally eat.

A Martian expedition would include packaged meals and a means to produce food inside Starship and within a climate-controlled habitat once on Mars. Producing food in space is still in its infancy. On board the ISS is the NASA Fiji Vegetable Production System which is not only producing food for the crew but is also turning them into space farmers which is both therapeutic and rewarding.

There are many questions and challenges still to be overcome with Hassamami stating, “Our lab and others around the world will address these questions, and we hope that biotechnology, synthetic biology, and metabolic engineering tools will help us answer them and design plants for space agriculture.”

What are some of these questions and challenges to overcome?

• On Mars, the Moon, or Starship, balancing carbon dioxide (CO2) and oxygen levels sufficient for plant and crew health will require cultivating new strains of the former capable of thriving and supporting variable atmospheric conditions.
• Plant anatomical and physiological structures will need to compensate for not only the stresses of low gravity and microgravity but also, deal with:
  • Damage to DNA and mitochondria observed in current plants being grown in space. This will mean remodelling plant cell walls, changes to the composition and structure of polysaccharides, and the engineering of high-fibre plants needed to ensure the digestive health of human crews.
  • A common complaint about foods eaten in space leading to menu boredom caused by changes in how it tastes, altered texture, and loss of flavour.
  • Turning plants into repositories of essential minerals, phytochemicals and micronutrients that currently get lost from them in space.

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have experimented with growing plants in the confined space of the ISS to produce maximum yields. They are working with using red light to improve whole-plant development, gene expression and adaptive responses to microgravity addressing many of the above challenges. Red light activation stimulates and restores cell proliferation and root growth in plants improving their stress response to space travel.

What will a farm heading to Mars on a Starship look like? It will be a jam-packed vertical farm, not looking much like anything on Earth and will truly be the first “red light district” in space.

No space-tracking system whether in orbit or on Earth saw the Chelyabinsk rock before it entered the atmosphere. Why was that? Two reasons have been given. The first is that we don’t pick up on space rocks coming at us from all orbital angles particularly if coming in from the direction of the Sun in daylight. The second is that the Chelyabinsk rock was too small for Earth-based telescopes to detect and that it was a stony chondrite composed of silicates and dark materials which made it non-reflective. Our best estimate on size was that Chelyabinsk was between 12 and 13,000 metric tons and 20 metres or 66 feet in diameter.

It approached the atmosphere during daylight, flying from east to west, which made it virtually invisible. Even if it had hit the atmosphere on the nightside of the planet, our ground-based telescopes would not have detected it until it was within 135,000 kilometres (less than 84,000 miles) of Earth. Travelling at 69,000 kilometres (42,700 miles) per hour, that would have given us less than 2 hours warning before it struck.

Chelyabinsk broke up before fragments hit the ground. It was its explosion that caused damage to buildings but fortunately didn’t result in any human deaths for the city of 1.1 million.

Asteroid 2023 NT1 is another story. It was first detected two days after it made its closest approach, within 100,000 kilometres or 61,000 miles from Earth (a quarter of the distance from the Moon). Described to be as large as a commercial passenger jet, it measured over 60 metres (200 feet) in diameter. Like the Chelyabinsk meteorite, it came at us from the Sun making it undetectable. If it had entered our atmosphere, the impact would have been significantly larger than what occurred over Russia in 2013.

Planetary Defences Today

NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission launched in November 2021, was the first test of what could become standard practice to defend the planet from errant space rocks. In September 2022, the spacecraft deliberately plowed into Dimorphos. a companion space rock to the near-Earth asteroid named Didymos. The collision was a planetary defence test to see if the kinetic energy created by the impact of a projectile could alter the trajectory of its target. Based on observations since the collision, Dimorphos has seen its orbit of Didymos change. Four years from now a European Space Agency mission will once more visit Didymos to measure the changes DART caused.

Today, we can account for approximately 40% of the space rocks that are near Earth. That means objects are flying by our planet, often well within the orbit of the Moon, for which we have no record. We remain blind to space rocks as big as a bus or a commercial passenger jet when approaching from the daylight side of our planet.

A proposed method to defend the planet from a space rock first detected only hours from Earth has been given the acronym, PI. It stands for “Pulverize It.” This is different than DART which was designed to nudge a space rock off course. PI (see image above) would involve launching a kinetic mass at hypervelocity to smash an incoming meteorite, comet, or small asteroid. Based on the angle of intercept, the fragments created would either burn up in the atmosphere before striking the Earth or miss the surface of the planet entirely. The resulting airbursts would produce atmospheric shockwaves with far less effect than Chelyabinsk. The longer the warning time, the less likely the impacted and shattered object will intersect with our atmosphere. But, in the case where the window of warning is short like Chelyabinsk or Asteroid 2023 NT1, the damage to anything on the surface would be dramatically mitigated.

What PI proposes is heightened detection combined with short-term mitigation systems. Objects the size of Chelyabinsk impact Earth about once a century. Objects like 2023 NT1 could strike Earth about once a millennia. The authors of the PI strategy write:

“While 2023 NT1 currently poses no threat to Earth, it is conceivable that similar objects could go undetected and result in short-warning (or no-warning) impacts. In situations like these, deflection-based mitigation strategies fall short of preventing damage if warning times are not sufficiently long; the time taken to plan, assemble, launch, and deflect is likely to be on the scale of years if not decades.”

Hence the DART strategy that NASA has demonstrated is insufficient. What is needed, therefore, is “a robust planetary defence system” prepared to deal with a range of threat sizes and warning times, that is layered, reliable, and tested.

Researchers at the University of Surrey and Swansea University along with engineers in training from the Algerian Space Agency collaborated in building a cubesat that featured solar test panels. It was launched into space in September of 2016. Seven years later the results have been published.

The cubesat’s solar cells were made from a lightweight stable crystalline compound containing cadmium and tellurium. The compound was laid down on extremely thin glass. The picture above shows you the cubesat during construction.

In a press release that accompanied the online release of the paper that will appear in the December issue of Acta Astronautica, Craig Underwood, Emeritus Professor of Spacecraft Engineering at the Surrey Space Centre, University of Surrey states:

“Detailed data show the panels have resisted radiation and their thin-film structure has not deteriorated in the harsh thermal and vacuum conditions of space. This ultra-low mass solar cell technology could lead to large, low-cost solar power stations deployed in space, bringing clean energy back to Earth – and now we have the first evidence that the technology works reliably in orbit.”

Solar cells when exposed to the vacuum and harsh extreme temperature conditions in space delaminate over time. But not these. The expectation of the designers was they would work for a year. Today, they are still going strong.

Cadmium Telluride is Not New Technology

Cadmium telluride (CdTe) is the second most commonly used material found in solar cell technology here on Earth. Crystalline silicon photovoltaics dominate the market and are found powering satellites, the International Space Station (ISS), and China’s Tiangong. They are the solar panels found on most home roofs today.

So where is CdTe deployed? Currently, the technology represents approximately 5% of the total installed solar panel base today. Large commercial solar farms use CdTe. Prior to the cubesat launch, no CdTe cells had been deployed in space.

Not everything has worked perfectly on the cubesat. There are needed changes to perfect the technology for deployment in space. Although the cells have proven to be resilient, the back contact architecture needs reworking because the cells fill factor (FF), a key measure to evaluate efficiency has shown decreases over time.

FF is calculated by dividing the maximum power possible from a cell by its actual output. With the cubesat there have been noted decreases in shunt resistance effecting how much of the power actually gets harvested. The problem points to the interface which uses gold as a contact material between the back panel and the CdTe cells. The design team, however, believes a solution already exists in CdTe panels deployed here on Earth and plans to make changes in the next cubesat experiment.

Is Energy from Space No Longer Science Fiction?

Solar panels on Earth today convert between 20 to 30% of the energy gathered from sunlight into electricity. In space, solar panels are thirteen times more efficient. That’s why there is a high interest in harvesting solar energy produced in space and beamed to Earth.

Current solar panels deployed on ISS and Tiangong station require supplementary battery storage for backup because both of their orbits pass through Earth’s shadow half the time.

For solar power from space, the intermittency problem that the two space stations experience can be solved two ways. The first approach would be to deploy a solar farm in geostationary orbit where Earth’s shadow would never impede sunlight. The second approach would deploy a constellation of small solar satellites similar to the SpaceX Starlink mesh network being buit for continuous telecommunications service delivery to anywhere on the planet.

The remaining challenge would be getting the power back to receivers on Earth. Technological solutions are already being tested. Back in August 2023 a posting on this site described the results from a Caltech-deployed satellite using a microwave array to demonstrate how solar energy collected in space could be converted to microwaves, and sent to a receiver on Earth. This technology could be used for both previously described approaches to space-based solar power generation.

How far in the future do we have to wait before solar power from outer space becomes an Earth-based reality? As we have described, the technology pieces are already being put in place for future pilot deployments, likely before the end of this decade.

It is conceivable that by mid-century that cities, industry, and homes anywhere on the planet will be on the direct receivng end of power generated this way. What a different world it will be with the democratization of energy available for all.