Space settlement has been the focus of researchers and organizations for years, offering the possibility of ensuring humanity’s long-term survival, advancing scientific knowledge and driving technological innovation. Agencies like NASA have set their sights on sending astronauts to Mars by the 2030s.
To advance to the possibilities of living on other planets, researchers are examining what is needed to keep those explorers safe, including food, power sources, climate acclimation and transportation.
Among the UCF’s researchers leading this work is College of Sciences Assistant Professor Ramses Ramirez, a planetary scientist and astrobiologist who’s studying how Martian nanoparticles could be used to warm the planet’s surface to a habitable temperature in a process known as terraforming.
As a solar system and exoplanet enthusiast, Ramirez says our solar system is an example of an exoplanetary system. Using the knowledge of our solar system and exoplanets around it, Ramirez is able to get a better understanding of sustaining life on other planets and solar systems.
“The intersection between my work and biology is that ultimately I care about finding life on other planets. And if it’s not there, then we should become the life on that planet,” he says. “In our own solar system, if Mars is not habitable today or never did have life, we can change that.”
Here are five things Ramirez and other researchers are looking at when it comes to space settlement:
1. Bringing Water Back to Mars
To understand how to inhabit places like Mars, Ramirez’s research looks back at the history of the planet. As part of his terraforming work, his studies focus on Mars’ paleoclimate, giving insight into what the planet looked like centuries before. Based on his research, Mars is potentially interesting for sustaining human life because it was once habitable, Ramirez says.
Based on geologic evidence Ramirez has studied, Mars was once an Earthlike planet with features reminiscent of rivers and valleys on the surface, which are suggestive of water activity. To bring back the water once believed to be in those channels, an atmosphere to sustain liquid water on the surface and have it carve out features that we see would be needed.
“The question is, does [Mars] still have enough of those resources that it once had?” he says. “Do those resources still exist in some form today? And if they don’t exist, then how can we make up the gaps so that it can reclaim its former glory? So from my perspective, that’s what makes Mars interesting in terms of a potential second home for humans and for life here on Earth.”
2. Warming Mars with Nanorods
For humans to live on a planet, the surface needs to be warm enough for human survival, which is between 31 degrees Fahrenheit to 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
To explore this potential on Mars, Ramirez’s terraforming study involves accumulating Martian soil into a machine and processing it into cylindrical nanorods that are smaller than glitter. These nanorods would be sprayed into the lower atmosphere like a fountain, interact with solar radiation and trap heat near the surface. This concept would warm parts of Mars to about 30 degrees Fahrenheit, making it slightly more capable of growing plants and producing breathable air.
The study also found that the proposed nanorods are about 5,000 times more effective at warming Mars than previously considered approaches. Terraforming Mars through nanoparticles engineered from the Martian soil greatly reduces terraforming costs and eliminates the need to deliver many resources to Mars, Ramirez says.
The technology could also be used on other planets that would need their environments altered for humans. Depending on the planet, Ramirez says it could be carbon dioxide, water vapor or other sorts of gases that could be launched into the atmosphere to warm the planet.
“It can host at least Earth-type life, or at least conditions that are warm enough with high enough pressures and low enough toxicity to survive on a world like Mars,” he says.
3. Developing Potential Food Sources
There are decades of research on growing crops on Mars, with concepts from growing plants in the Martian regolith to developing greenhouses. Space Resource Technologies, a private company that originated from UCF’s Exolith Lab, has created simulated Mars soil that has been used to test plant growth.
While there’s evidence that Mars was once a more habitable world, the extent of which is still unknown. Organics, matter that is key to sustaining life on a planet, have been found on Mars via the Viking, Curiosity and Perseverance missions, providing potential evidence that there could’ve been life, such as plants, on the surface or subsurface.
“Those conditions could have led to life on early Mars. That life would then die and hopefully [be] preserved [as] fossils,” Ramirez says. “There’s no evidence for this, but again, where we understand the evidence of organics and water on Mars all point to the possibility that Mars at least had the building blocks, many of the building blocks for life.”
4. Solar-Powered Solutions
Solar panels have helped power some of the technology on the Martian surface, such as rovers. Another power source, radioisotope thermal generators, provides electrical power to spacecraft using heat from the natural radioactive decay of plutonium-238.
NASA is also exploring a fission system that could operate continuously when power generation from sunlight is difficult. This would include a design that can provide at least 40 kilowatts of power, enough to continuously power 30 households for 10 years. The compact, lightweight system would be able to provide power to a Mars outpost.
With reliable power sources that have proven to be effective over multiple planetary explorations, Ramirez doesn’t think that will be a major issue on the red planet. Mars has an Earthlike day of 24 hours and 37 minutes, which means it would get a similar amount of sunlight time to that on Earth and allow solar-capturing technology to work like it does on humanity’s home planet. However, on planets that rotate slower and have much longer days, like Venus, there may be more of a challenge to use solar technology.
Researchers have proposed various solar energy options, including using an aircraft with high-temperature solar arrays to harvest solar energy in Venus’ atmosphere and store this energy in rechargeable batteries. An aerial platform would then descend below the cloud deck to transfer this energy via laser power beaming to a lander on the Venusian surface. The surface lander would include a laser power converter for receiving the beamed energy, converting it to electrical power, and transferring it to the lander’s rechargeable batteries.
5. Settling in Venus’ Atmosphere
Although Venus’ highly pressurized surface is 90 times what we experience here on Earth — and its thick atmosphere makes living on the planet unfeasible — 31 miles above the surface lies an Earthlike environment that interests space settlers looking to someday explore the planet. Venus is closer to Earth than Mars (1.12 astronomical units to 1.69 astronomical units) with shorter launch windows, making travel easier. The thick atmosphere also absorbs ultraviolet radiation better than Mars, and the study of Venus’ may help researchers further understand the future of Earth’s climate due to their similar compositions.
Ramirez says researchers are proposing creating spacecraft that could settle in the Venusian atmosphere. Concepts include designing space vehicles that can fly above the cloud tops of Venus, avoiding the high amounts of sulfuric acid the Venusian clouds contain. Ramirez says being able to mine Venus’ surface for elements like iron and aluminum would be difficult due to the pressure. However, researchers have looked at extracting carbon dioxide from the air and converting it to oxygen in terraforming efforts.
Researchers would need to find a way to cope with the corrosive acid in the atmosphere and make it safe for aircraft in the Venusian atmosphere so that if something happens, the astronauts there would be safe, Ramirez says.
As part of UCF’s research and efforts to help advance space settlement, Ramirez is looking forward to further studies into what will be needed for humanity to live outside of Earth.
“I am excited to help pioneer UCF’s efforts to send humans to other planets. I think we have the resources and capital at this university to make big dreams like this a reality,” he says. “I am always trying to improve the way we think about how humans can settle other planets. My ongoing work in trying to understand what makes planets habitable gives me a unique perspective on how we, as humankind, can do the same on other worlds.”
