José Antonio Rodríguez-Manfredi: "The cost and risk of manned missions to Mars are still high"

Manned missions to Mars will be "an unparalleled achievement in many ways", but the risks to carry them out successfully are still high, said Spanish researcher José Antonio Rodríguez-Manfredi, Mission manager of one of the instruments carried by the Curiosity rover and Head of Department of Instrumentation and Space Exploration of the Spanish Astrobiology Centre, in an interview with Zero Gravity. 

Rodríguez-Manfredi works on the development of spacial instruments to explore and characterize the geobiology of planets and satellites, as well as others used in the study of extreme environments on Earth. 

Regarding to Curiosity, he is the manager of the “Rover Environmental Monitoring Station” (REMS), designed by Spanish scientists, which measures the air and soil temperatures, pressure, humidity, wind speed, and ultraviolet radiation among other values. 

What is Curiosity currently working on? 

During these weeks we are in 'Planetary Conjunction', since Mars is on the other side of the sun, disrupting communications between Earth and Curiosity. In this situation, the team has decided to reduce the scientific activity to its minimum: only three instruments will be operating but minimally, while the rover remains motionless. During this time, we will not send any commands. For its part, the rover will also significantly reduce its transmissions to Earth, merely sending a signal that will tell us if it is OK. 

In recent weeks, we have been sending the work plan to be carried out during this period. Before this conjunction, Curiosity pierced for the first time in history the Martian surface and analyzed the samples obtained. 

Which other aspects of Mars are left to study by Curiosity? 

The project has set the exploration and characterization of Gale Crater as its scientific objectives because of its potential habitat for life. In that sense, Curiosity has answered many questions we had initially planned. However, Gale Crater has a wide range of environments and stores still many surprises for us. For each question we try to answer, many more arise. But ultimately, that's science. 

What are the main difficulties to overcome for a succesful manned mission to Mars? 

Apart from being extremely expensive, it is necessary to ensure the safety, health, and the return of the astronauts. During the trip, they would be subjected to extreme conditions, especially the radiation from the Sun. We are talking of between 9 and 10 month journey to Mars, a stay of a few more months to make the scientific mission profitable and the return trip. Today, we can still learn a lot of things about Mars via robotic missions, without having to assume these risks and high costs. However, sooner or later manned missions will be undertaken with no doubt. 

The scientific community seems to disagree on whether it is better to keep sending robots or focus the efforts on manned missions instead. What is your opinion? Which option offers better results? 

Undoubtedly, manned science missions could obtain tremendous results in much less time. However, the cost and the risk is high. To explain these concepts, I usually compare ground-remote robotic exploration of planets like Mars to trying to see the content of a room through a hole in the wall. Decades ago, the diameter of this hole through which we saw the room (conditioned by the tools and technology that we could send to the planet) was small compared with the much larger diameter of the hole we can see through now. It is the same in the case of Curiosity. The current scientific instruments are much more sophisticated and powerful than then. In this analogy, we now know much more about room than a few years ago. However, it would not be comparable to enter to the room and examine the inside with great detail. 

As I said before, sooner or later we will set foot on Mars. This will be an achievement unmatched in many ways. Until that point, we still have a long way to go, through robotic missions which will bring samples to Earth, for example. 

Curiosity can not detect life itself, but it can give us many clues about the possibilities of the existance of organisms on the planet. Should we focus our research on this direction before putting a man on Mars? 

Without a doubt. NASA is already considering, for future missions, the use of instrumentation directly aimed at the detection and characterization of life, past or present. The more we know of Mars before going in person, the better.

Could the U.S. carry out this effort by itself, as it did with the Moon, despite financial difficulties and within the deadline proposed by Obama? 

The titanic effort required by a mission of this magnitude is not available to any space agency alone, given the current situation. On the other hand, there have been successful examples of international collaborations in this regard, which show that these relationships work. 

What investment will be needed for a manned mission? By comparison with the cost of Curiosity or Phoenix, how much would it be? 

NASA has conducted a number of studies in this line. It has not disclose an exact figure of the investment needed, but stated that it would be a similar cost to the entire Apollo program, or about one hundred billion euros. However, it is a difficult question since it is still necessary to assess the cost of the infrastructure and development, and answer some questions that are unsolved yet... all aspects needed to launch a manned mission.

Could it be possible an international agreement for a cooperative mission among countries? Which countries might be interested in participating? 

From my point of view, I believe that an international mission would be the most reasonable way to address this challenge. The ESA (global or even national level agencies), NASA, JAXA, Roscosmos and the Canadian CSA have previously collaborated on other space projects. Moreover, the exploration of other planets is part of their programs, so at least a priori, we can expect an appropriate disposition.

How well is Spain positioned in the Mars research race? Have the crisis and the budget cuts in science undermined the Spanish participation in programs related to Mars? 

Spain occupies a consolidated position both in technological and industrial developments, as rocket science. Reaching this point has taken much time, effort, resources and investments. However, in order to maintain this position, we must keep investing in science and technology, something that is becoming increasingly difficult due to the crisis. The cuts are affecting very seriously many commitments already made as well as space programs -not just those related to Mars. This can make us lose that hard-won position.

According to several experts, the first manned mission to Mars will take place between the next 30 and 40 years. Is this feasible within the data available today? 

The global financial situation does not help to take this type of challenge. However, it is reasonable to think that man can set foot on our neighbouring planet within 30-40 years. In fact, some think that even before.

Will we see considerable progress in methods of propulsion in that period of time? Nowadays, it takes about 300 days to reach Mars, how could this time be reduced in the coming years? 

Since some years ago, we have seen how ion thrusters are breaking into the sector. Although they may not be comparable to chemical thrusters in terms of thrust, they can be used in weightlessness (once taken out of the Earth), being able to reach much greater speeds with them than with classical chemical propellants. 

Moreover, fuel efficiency in the case of ion thrusters is higher than in the case of the chemical. This could make them particularly useful in long space travel. In such cases, it is estimated that the maximum speed that a spacecraft propelled by such engines could acquire would be about 300,000 km / h. 

Some researchers such as PhD. Dirk Schulze-Makuch argue that it would be possible to establish a permanent settlement on Mars after several manned expeditions. These early settlers would extract groundwater from the poles and could grow food in greenhouses. Sounds like science fiction, but are scientists working in this direction? 

Yes, many researchers, universities and several agencies are working on all aspects of travel and colonization of Mars. A few years ago the Mars500 experiment was successful. It was led by the Russian Academy of Sciences and ESA, an its goal was to simulate a trip to Mars in all its phases, for 520 days. This is just one example of the many projects and research programs that aim to define the requirements, procedures and technologies needed to establish these settlements, location and use of available resources, etc.. 

How could the settlers prevent polutting Mars' environment and causing potential damage to microbial life such a thing exists? 

There are protocols collected in what we call "Planetary Protection" which cover not only those aspects, but also prevent Earthian life contamination when conducting sample return missions. These protocols define procedures for sterilization and monitoring everything that is sent out of our Earth. However, it is very difficult and expensive to ensure that the vehicles and the technology are absolutely free from biological contamination. Therefore, the most we can do is to reduce the likelihood of contamination everything as much as we could, but that value can never become 0.0%.

Tags: Mars, Planets, Space, Universe

The brain: the next big challenge for the American science

U.S. President Barack Obama presented yesterday the BRAIN Initiative ("Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies"), a fifteen-year research project whose goal is to draw the map of the activity and functions of the human brain, the organ hitherto unknown.

Its results are expected to be crucial for research on Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other mental illnesses, and to contribute also to the field of artificial intelligence. 

The project,  also commonly referred to as the Brain Activity Map Project, will start in 2014 with an initial investment of 100 million dollars (77 million euros). According to “The New York Times”, this figure will rise to 3,000 million dollars (2,300 million euros) for the whole period. Obama's announcement comes two months after the European Union decided to invest 1,000 million euros in the Human Brain Project. 

This multi-billion dollar U.S. investment has placed the BRAIN project as the most ambitious scientific research since United States launched the Human Genome Project, in which the American government invested 3.800 million dollars between 1990 and 2003. The profit generated by this research has risen to 800.000 million dollars so far. 

With over 100,000 million neurons, the brain remains a challenge for the XXI century scientific research. In the last decades, the study techniques were still too invasive and the neuronal tissue rots quickly and it is complex to dissect. 

However, BRAIN's team, led by the Spanish scientist Rafael Yuste, consider that current technology already allows researchers to study of the organ without interfering too much into it. 

"Ours is a nation of dreamers, of people who take risks," Obama said at one press conference held at the White House on April 2 to launch the project. 

"Now is the time to reach a level of research and development that has not been seen since the most intense times of the space race," said the U.S. president, to an audience of scientists and entrepreneurs. 

"As humans we can identify galaxies light years away, we can study particles smaller than the atom, but we still haven't unlocked the mystery of the 3lb of matter that sits between our ears, which hosts 100,000 million neurons with billions of connections," Obama continued.

The brain, target of other large research initiatives

The study of the brain has fascinated researchers since ancient times. Over 2,000 years ago, the Athenian philosopher Aristotle established that the brain was less important than the heart or the liver, despite being the largest organ of the nervous system. However, the brain regained its prominence in the Middle Ages, when Christian and Muslim scholars set the memory and intellect in it, two aspects that BRAIN project now hopes to study further. 

In late January, the European Commission selected the human brain and the graphene as the two objects of research in which the European Union will focus until 2020. This institution said it would invest 1,000 million euros in the Human Brain Project, with the participation of scientists from at least 15 EU countries led by Henry Markram (Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland). They will study the brain activity and possible treatments for mental illness using the world's largest brain experimental laboratory, to be built soon.

Tags: Brain, Health, Neuroscience, Research

Loopholes denounced in the EU law against testing cosmetics on animals

In mid-March the European Union implemented its long-awaited ban on animal testing for both finished cosmetic products and their components, and on marketing of cosmetics that have been tested on animals. A few days after this new Directive came into force, the British activist Michelle Thew went to Brussels to demand greater control by the EU and to denounce “loopholes” in the legislation. 

Thew, on behalf of the European Coalition to End Animal Experiments (ECEAE), urged the Petitions Committee of the European Parliament to do more to eliminate those loopholes that still allow tests of this kind to be carried out within the EU, mainly destined for third countries. 

"We want our companies to stop animal testing on products for third countries, including China," said Thew to the MEPs. 

The activist, CEO of "Cruelty Free International", also stressed that the current legislation only prohibits the testing of chemicals that are present exclusively in cosmetics. This, explained, produces "loopholes" that allow laboratories to test substances in cosmetics but also in other types of products. According to Thew, the EU should play a more active role in this issue. 

To strengthen its petition, the ECEAE -which comprises 24 organizations in favour of animal welfare from 22 Member States- submitted over 220,000 signatures. 

Following Thew's intervention, British MEP Keith Taylor, a member of the Greens/EFA parliamentary group, called the European Commission to find ways to prevent these loopholes and to encourage non EU countries to join the ban on animal testing. 

"No animal has to suffer so that we can have a new face cream or another lipstick," said. 

Prior to this Directive, cosmetics tested on animals were of all kinds, from colonies desodorodantes, shampoos or gels, to mouthwash, shaving creams, eye shadows, bath salts or tanning creams. The aim of these tests was finding out if any of the chemicals involved was toxic, carcinogenic or promoter of side effects such as skin irritation or genetic alterations.

Tags: Animals, Biodiversity, Biology, Chemistry, Environment, Research

The most surprising discoveries of the last decade

The Science Museum of London harbours some of the most important scientific and technological advances in the last centuries. Recently, it also displayed Rex, the first prototype of a bionic man, worth over a million euros and the cutting-edge of prosthetics and artificial organs -despite missing some core like the brain. However, will Rex figure in the ranking of the top ten scientific discoveries of the last decade? 

Some candidates to take into consideration could be: 

Mars' surface

- The discovery of water on Mars: the topography of the Martian surface leaded scientists to think that in the past Mars had large amounts of liquid water. However, in June 2008, the Phoenix Mars Lander went further and found ice under a thin layer of dust. The researchers do not rule out that there is still a small amount of water under the ice caps, which would increase the chances of finding microscopic life. 

- Deciphering the Human Genome: The Human Genome Project, one of the most ambitious research in the history of science, led by Craig Venter and Francis Collins, gave birth to the first draft of the human genome in 2003. In these ten years, scientists have sequenced the genomes of many other species and have greatly accelerated the process. In addition to revolutionizing biology, DNA sequencing is already being used for diagnostic purposes and will open the door to numerous advances in the coming years, especially in the field of personalized medicine. 

- The ENCODE project: linked to the Human Genome Project, an international team of 442 scientists, found that 80% of the DNA chain -considered so far "junk DNA"- contains important instructions for life and acts as a large control panel with millions of switches that regulate the activity of our genes. These fragments could yield new information about heart disease, multiple sclerosis or Crohn's disease. 

- The Higgs boson: in March 2013, scientists at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) presented new results confirming that the tiny particle discovered in July 2012 is the Higgs boson, but it remains to determine what subtype it is. Confirmation of the existence of the Higgs boson within the Standard Model of particle physics would mean to have understood the mechanism by which particles acquire mass. 

Higgs boson

- The age of the universe: in March 2010, an international team of researchers estimated the age of the universe at 13.75 billion years, thanks to the measurements taken by NASA's Hubble telescope and the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). The American agency has also also disclosed the proportion of ingredients of the universe: a 5% is ordinary matter, 23% accounts for dark matter and 72% is dark energy, a force that speed up the expansion of the cosmos. 

- Demonstration of the Poincaré conjecture: known as the greatest mathematical puzzle of the twentieth century and one of the Seven Millennium Problems posed by the Clay Mathematics Institute. The Russian mathematician Grygori Perelman announced its resolution in 2003, although the peer review was delayed until 2006. That year, Perelman declined the invitation to collect in Madrid the Fields Medal, considered the Nobel of Mathematics, to avoid becoming a "pet" of the mathematical world. 

- Gene therapy: in 2007 scientist succeed to insert a gene into a patient in order to cure a disease, namely, a type of blindness called Leber congenital amaurosis, which is caused by mutations in the RPE65 gene and is hereditary. Patients undergoing therapy experienced improvement in their vision and suffered no side effects, so it is considered the first test conducted successfully. Since then, gene therapy trials have been carried out in a large number of diseases, particularly cancers and those included within the group of monogenic diseases, caused by a single gene disorder. 

British researcher John B. Gurdon

- The cellular reprogramming: John B. Gurdon (United Kingdom) and Shinya Yamanaka (Japan) received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2012 after discovering that specialized mature cells can be reprogrammed to develop into mature cells in all kind of tissues of the body. Gurdon had discovered in 1962 that the specialization of cells was reversible. In 2006, Yamanaka got mice reprogrammed mature cells into pluripotent stem cells, namely, immature cells capable of developing into any type of cell in the body. Their discovery is a major step in the field of regenerative medicine. 

- The graphene revolution: the Nobel Prize in Physics 2010 recognized the work of the Russian scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, "for his innovative experiments with graphene in two dimensions", a transparent material, very flexible, with excellent thermal and electrical conduction, sturdy and lightweight. Although already known for over half a century, graphene went unnoticed for decades. Now it is considered the material of the future, with a large number of applications in various fields, mainly technology (faster microprocessors, resilient electrical devices, electronic paper...).

Tags: Discoveries, Genetics, Genome, Mathemathics, Research, Space, Technology

Getting to Mars: the main challenges

The eagerness to get to Mars aboard a manned spacecraft in the next three decades, spurred after the discoveries made by Curiosity and its predecessors, has set the conquest of the red neighbour as the next "giant leap for mankind." However, there are still some challenges and questions to which science must find answers in order for the mission to succeed. 

- Methods of propulsion: when Mars and Earth are closest to each other, both planets distance 55 million miles. With current technology, this distance represents between 150 and 300 days of travel. Improved propulsion methods would shorten this path, and drive humans to further and more interesting places within the Solar System, such as the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. The last two rovers to land on the Martian surface, the Phoenix and the Curiosity, took 295 and 253 days, respectively. 

- Ionizing radiation: among the things that Mars might envy of the Earth there are two key needed to be understood better in order to thrive in the neighbouring planet: the atmosphere and the terrestrial magnetic field. Although Mars has both of them, they are much weaker. Thus, the level of radiation on the Martian surface exceed twice the level recorded in the International Space Station, and may increase even further depending on solar activity. What impact would have this radiation on the health of the astronauts? 

- Gravity: the red planet's gravity is 3.711 m/s², only the third of the Earth. Although higher than in the Moon (1.7 m/s²), it remains unknown whether settlers would suffered any health problems associated with weightlessness, such as loss of muscle mass and bone decalcification. 

- Wacht out, pollution!: Although the existence of life on Mars has not yet confirmed, some scientists, such as the Spanish researcher and expert in Planetary Geology Jesus Martínez Frías, warn that a manned mission should include precautions to avoid alter the new environment. 

- We have landed! So now what?: Some scientists, such as astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University and co-author of the book "A One Way Mission to Mars: Colonizing the Red Planet", imagine the colonization of Mars as a process that begins for manned missions which will return to Earth. However, these first trips will soon give way to a more permanent stay. The pioneers in staying on Mars would continue to receive supplies from Earth until they could support themselves (for what the International Space Station will play a key role). Mars settlers will inhabit a place certainly quirky. First, all structures or buildings should be equipped with cabin air pressure that would make its survival feasible. Measurements made so far suggest that the level of CO2 on Mars is 52 times that of the Earth, an amount that scientists believe may probably allow the cultivation of plants. Besides, the red planet's soil has proven to contain an abundant presence of minerals essential for life. 

Although supporters of the colonization of Mars argue that a human-managed scientific basis could provide valuable data for the advancement of space research, many other voices criticize the enormous expense required to put humans on the neighbouring planet, and argue that the same could be achieved for much less money using robots instead. The economic meltdown, the budget cuts in science and the success of Curiosity tips the balance in favour of the latter. The question is: for how long?

Tags: Mars, Planets, Space