As Hollywood’s vision of how astronauts might one day escape from Mars debuts in the new science fiction movie “The Martian,” NASA is moving forward in the real world with studies of concepts for an ascent vehicle to lift humans from the surface of the red planet.
Even though human exploration missions are not likely until the 2030s, initial design studies already show that the Mars ascent vehicle (MAV) will be very different from the ascent stage of the Apollo Lunar Module, the only craft ever to carry humans off the surface of another planetary body. The MAV will have to be “significantly more massive,” says NASA Marshall Space Flight Center’s human architectures team lead, Tara Polsgrove.
In addition to dealing with more than double the gravity of the Moon plus the weight of up to four crewmembers, twice that carried by the Apollo lander, the MAV will require a much larger propulsion system to meet the higher delta V (velocity change) requirements of the Mars ascent trajectory. Time to docking is also longer for Mars, with an ascent time of 24-44 hr., compared to 2.1-3.7 hr. for Apollo.
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