(Multicom Jingle)
(dramatic music)
- [William] Staying alive in deep space is no easy matter.
For the astronauts aboard the first spacecraft to Mars
their last look back at Earth is a distant memory.
- [Astronaut] Meteorite shower, meteorite shower.
Roger, we're coming in.
- [William] Any hope of rescue is long passed.
These six people have gone further than anyone before.
Now they're completely on their own.
Mars sits waiting, beckoning, at the other end,
hundreds of millions of kilometers away.
But to get there, the astronauts have to cross a mine field
of deep space dangers.
(dramatic music)
And it's not just meteorites
that will endanger their lives.
Weightlessness seems like harmless fun,
but months in zero gravity wreak havoc on the human body.
- They will come back
with the bone of a 90 year old individual.
- [William] Bone and muscle loss
have plagued long duration flights for almost 30 years.
- Artificial gravity is the holy grail
when it comes to long duration weightlessness
on your way to Mars.
- [William] And there's another deadly force
waiting in deep space.
Cosmic radiation
generated at the core of dying stars
explodes out across the solar system.
- Fireworks, celestial fireworks
will be going off in my brain.
This is cosmic radiation.
- [William] Microscopic missiles pass through
the skin of a spacecraft
like a pin through a child's balloon.
- Very low doses of this cosmic ray
can destroy brain cells.
- [William] Scientists and engineers
believe cosmic rays can be beaten,
and the search is on for solutions.
- [Sheila] 13.
(fibers burst)
- [William] But the best protection
may be to send robotic astronauts
to do the most dangerous work required
on the journey to Mars.
(dramatic music)
- We're gonna give them the very best technology
we've got, so they come back safely.
- [William] For two and a half years
six people will be caregivers to one another.
It's them against the universe.
- Clear it!
- [William] On a mission to Mars
the number one goal is staying alive.
(dramatic music)
- [William] This is not really
what life is like in deep space.
- [Announcer] Condition one throughout the ship.
- [William] TV and movies make it look easy
by adding make believe gravity
to their make believe spacecraft.
(dramatic music)
This is the reality of zero gravity.
No gravity at all, everything floats.
People who have been there like it.
- You know you're out in space, and it is effortless.
You're just literally floating everywhere.
It's absolutely wonderful.
- It is so easy to move about
by just pushing on the walls.
Small little pressure and you float in the other direction.
- [William] But it's not good for your body.
- We end up losing muscle mass.
We end up losing bone mass.
And we also lose the ability to stand upright
or even to sit upright.
- [William] US astronaut, Heidi Piper
trained like all her colleagues
for a space shuttle mission in 2006.
(audience applause)
But when she returned to Earth, Piper got a surprise.
- And so I figure I could stand here, standing enough.
- [William] Piper's legs buckled
after just 12 days in weightlessness.
How would the Mars crew be affected
by up to two years of zero gravity?
Retired US astronaut, Jerry Linenger knows
all about the muscle sapping power of zero gravity.
He spent over 3,000 hours in space including nearly
five months on the Russian space station Muir.
In that time he lost 65% of his muscle strength.
Before zero gravity, Linenger
could easily lift 45 kilos over his head.
After five months, weightless in space,
he could only manage 16 kilos.
- You're my main guy, yeah.
Two or three year trip to Mars, I think
you can expect some very severe muscle atrophy.
- [William] It's estimated the trip to Mars,
six months there and six months back
would result in a 50% loss in muscle strength
and it's not just the muscles that are affected.
Zero gravity is tough on the bones too.
- For a 40, 45 year old male going out on that trip
and coming back, they will come back
with a bone of a 90 year old individual.
- [William] The bones lose their calcium
and become brittle.
They could snap just opening a hatch.
A misstep could break an ankle or a leg.
- None of us wanna go and send an astronaut to Mars
and have him or her land there weak, jellyfish,
unable to support the skeleton, risk a fracture.
- [William] For the Mars mission,
finding a solution to zero gravity
is top on the agenda.
(speaking foreign language)
The Russians may have the answer.
They already have experience with long
duration flights and its effect on cosmonauts.
For 20 years, they've been looking for a solution.
The fix may come by creating weightlessness on Earth.
After just seven days stretched out in a rubberized bag,
floating in water, most test subjects
lose 40% of their strength.
To beat that effect, engineers have created a suit
fitted out with bungee cords that will make
their muscles work all the way to Mars.
An electronic pulse that trick leg muscles
into expanding and contracting.
It's not high tech but it goes some way
to keeping the bones and muscles in shape.
The standard countermeasure in orbit now
is daily workouts, two to four hours a day
of grim exercise, very unpopular with the crews.
- Lotta self discipline though, to get on that treadmill
in the first place 'cause it is not
a very pleasant experience.
- [William] And it's not all that effective.
- You just have a hard time countering
22 hours of floating effortlessly.
- [William] The best way to solve the problem
is to create gravity on board the Mars ship.
- Artificial gravity is the holy grail
when it comes to protecting the astronauts
against the deconditioning that goes with long
duration weightlessness on your way to Mars.
(dramatic music)
- [William] To create artificial gravity,
the Mars spaceship must be designed to spin.
It works like a merry go round.
The centrifugal force presses on the crews' bodies
just like the Earth's gravitational pull.
Early designs of artificial gravity space craft
were huge, too big to be practical.
- Up to 100 meters in diameter spinning very slowly.
Guaranteed to work, guaranteed never
to fly because of its expense.
The one design which is very appealing
and would not be terribly expensive would consist
of a space craft and its power supply separated by a tether.
- [William] The Mars spaceship will start
the journey like a rocket.
But when it hits cruising speed, they cut the engines
and switch to the slow turning mode.
- Spin up for artificial gravity has been initiated.
Point seven G at four point five--
- [William] When the space craft reaches the right
spinning speed, it establishes
artificial gravity for the crew.
(dramatic music)
The technology to create gravity in an entire space craft
could be years away so Lawrence Young is developing
an alternative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
- Hi, you comfortable in there?
- Yeah, really good.
- Let's see you step on each foot.
- [William] Only the person using the machine
feels artificial gravity.
This is easier, cheaper technology than spinning
an entire vehicle and crew.
- [Lawrence] You don't live on the artificial
gravity subterfuge, you visited it.
- [William] For 45 minutes to an hour everyday
or so, astronauts on their way to Mars
could strap themselves in
and get enough gravity to maintain
muscles and bone strength.
(dramatic music)
- Okay, we are almost ready to start.
- [William] Right now there's one hitch.
It has some unpleasant and possibly dangerous side effects.
- Are you okay? - Yeah, ready.
(suspenseful music)
- The brain gets level of what we call sensory conflict
and reacts to it by all of the symptoms of motion sickness.
- [William] People get motion sickness
on Young's machine because it's compact.
It has to spin very quickly to create artificial gravity.
Coming off Young's machine, an astronaut can get seasick.
To fix that, researchers watch the test
subject's eyes through tiny cameras.
- [Lawrence] What we see is vertical eye movements
which tells us that he and his brain is confused.
He thinks he is tumbling head over heels
when he is spinning in a circle on the centrifuge.
- [William] What really gets the brain confused
is spinning and turning the head
and on a mission to Mars, astronauts
may have to do just that.
- [Lawrence] Three, two,
one, now.
(dramatic music)
- [William] A crew member confused and seasick
for even a short while is not an option.
While Young and his team perfect their centrifuge,
researchers in California have built their own
gravity generator, a space cycle.
A person pedaling gets a traditional workout.
The spinning passenger actually
gets up to five time Earth's gravity.
- We may find out that hyper gravity training
actually accelerates the training effect.
You may have to spend less time doing it.
- [William] Even if the technology to create
artificial gravity is finally mastered,
waiting in deep space is another
more deadly invisible force.
Microscopic bits of matter can blast right
through the skin of the space craft
and through the bodies of the people inside.
(dramatic music)
As a crew bound for Mars passes into deep space
leaving the protective cocoon of Earth's magnetic field,
the bombardment of their space craft begins.
An invisible and dangerous force passes
through the skin of the space craft
and the bodies of the people inside.
- On your way to Mars, you are gonna get zapped
very severely with lots of radiation.
- [William] The microscopic threat is created
by dying stars, exploding supernovas.
The blast propels carbon, iron, and uranium,
the founding elements of our world,
out across the universe, as close to the speed of light,
its cosmic radiation, it can be lethal
and is inescapable.
- I turn my head 90 degrees.
(makes swooshing sound)
I'd see little contrails going by and I'd say,
"Okay, I'm getting hit by something."
- [William] Jerry Linenger an astronaut and medical doctor
could sense cosmic radiation invading his body.
- [Jerry] Whatever ill effects that radiation
might have is obviously increasing day by day
by day when you're out there in space.
Sometimes at night, I used to sleep on a wall,
I used to sleep upside down on the wall,
close my eyes and all of a sudden I'd see flash,
flash, flash, sorta looked like a pinpoint
light, very bright.
- [William] Jeffrey Hoffman, another former astronaut
had similar reactions to cosmic radiation
during 12 hundred hours in space.
- I would be sitting there with my eyes closed
and these fireworks, celestial fireworks
would be going off in my brain
and you realize, yeah this is cosmic radiation.
- [William] Linenger and Hoffman react to their
cosmic radiation exposure with the expected astronaut
bravery but their health could yet pay a price.
Cancer, cosmic rays pierce cells, damaging DNA strands.
The damaged DNA becomes mutated and cancerous.
When it can't repair itself completely,
it multiplies itself millions of times.
- [Jerry] They're gonna probably take older
people on that mission to Mars.
I don't think it's gonna be the 35 year old person
because the lifetime cancer risk when that person
comes back is gonna be very high so you have to tell
them that risk up front, maybe take an older healthy person
and you live with that cancer risk when you get back.
- [William] Cancer is a long term threat.
Short term health danger for astronauts
is equally frightening, brain damage.
- Engine, frontal back.
- [William] The area of the brain most vulnerable
is the part that's vital to learning and memory.
- Tearin' over Houston, we show all systems nominal.
- [William] NASA is using one of the largest tools
on Earth, the particle accelerator to learn more
about the effects of cosmic radiation.
Researcher, Marcelo Vasquez, loads a liquid
containing brain cells into the accelerator.
The accelerator's buried underground.
Put simply, it's a huge circular
racetrack for subatomic particles.
Powerful magnets placed around the track accelerate
the particles to half the speed of light.
The speeding particles smash into the brain cell samples.
This is how cosmic rays in outer
space enter the brains of astronauts.
- Okay we are ready for next exposure.
- [William] Vasquez wants to know how many
direct hits human brain cells can take.
He's got bad news for astronauts involved
on a long haul mission to Mars.
- Very low doses of this cosmic ray can destroy brain cells.
- [William] Cosmic rays can leak
through Earth's magnetic field.
Astronaut Jerry Linenger was hit by cosmic rays
while on space station Muir inside Earth's orbit.
There was no place to hide.
- You are gonna get zapped with lots of radiation.
Try to get behind a lead battery, try to cover up,
do whatever I could, you just have to live with it.
- [William] So far Linenger has suffered
no long term effects.
But in deep space, taking the full force of the radiation,
the Mars crew would be susceptible to brain damage.
A crew member with a shaky memory and a sudden
learning disability could endanger the mission.
The only solution is to find a material
that can shield the space craft.
But that's not as easy as it sounds.
- You're not gonna be able to shield the vehicle
unless you make it outta lead and you
just can't launch a vehicle like that.
- [William] Lead is far too heavy but NASA must find
a better shielding material if they're going to Mars.
The search for a new lightweight shielding material
is going on here at NASA's research lab
in Langley, Virginia.
- Four, five, six.
Okay, okay so this is specimen number one.
We're studying this for our radiation shielding project.
So we're gonna pull in tension, you've got it loaded, Steve?
- Yes.
- [William] Before materials engineer, Sheila Thibeault,
can sign off on a material to protect astronauts
from the deadly atmosphere of deep space,
it has to meet exacting standards.
Thibeault has watched hundreds of these procedures
searching for the perfect material.
- This is 16 years worth of effort to find the perfect
shielding material for a human mission to Mars.
We have learned that a material
with high hydrogen is very good.
- [William] Luckily for the engineers,
hydrogen can come in several forms.
The astronauts' food supply,
drinking water or even human waste.
One shield is made of a surprisingly familiar product.
- This is polyethylene and that works
very well for radiation shielding.
- [William] Polyethylene is so good, it's used
by the crew of the International Space Station
to line their sleeping quarters against cosmic rays.
For a Mars vehicle, polyethylene will be just one
ingredient of a much stronger composite material.
NASA began looking at composites after discovering
that aluminum, its standard for space craft materials
since the Apollo mission to the moon,
had a hidden danger.
- Aluminum is not a good radiation shield
for cosmic radiation.
- [William] When cosmic radiation hits the aluminum,
it breaks up atoms in the metal which generate
even more dangerous radioactive
particles inside the space craft.
- It's 2,000 pounds.
- [William] Thibeault is looking for a composite
that can do double duty, block cosmic rays
and be very strong.
- 3,000 pounds.
- [William] It will have to stand up to the rigors
of the launch, the journey to Mars and the landing.
- 13.
(fiber snaps)
- [William] This piece of graphite fiber
stands up to 5,000 kilos of tearing strength.
- We're really expecting a lot out of this particular
material, we know that it's a good radiation shield
but we want to apply it also for
the primary structure of a vehicle to Mars.
- [William] The astronauts' lives
depend on the right choice.
The team at Langley has only one chance to get it right.
(dramatic music)
Meanwhile an ex-astronaut who has been exposed
to cosmic radiation has his own ideas.
At MIT, Jeffrey Hoffman, now a professor,
has an idea that takes its inspiration
from the magnetic field shielding Earth.
- Is to take our space craft
which we're representing as being
a cylinder, we have the astronauts inside
and protect that from the incoming cosmic rays
by surrounding it with a magnetic field.
- [William] It's called a magnetosphere.
Electrical coils surrounding the space craft
receive a huge magnetic charge generated inside the vehicle.
Just like Earth's shield, charged
particles are bent around it.
But Hoffman's magnetic field must be more powerful
than the field surrounding Earth.
- The Earth has a rather weak magnetic field,
as magnetic fields go in the universe.
- [William] But Earth's shield is huge
so a charged particle hit is distributed over a vast area.
Not so with a tiny space craft.
It needs a super strong magnetic field
to take the full force of the charged particles.
Technology to generate enough power for the shield
could be years away but pursuing it is a must.
- If we're going to ever really become a space faring
civilization and do this as a matter of course,
radiation protection has gotta be a part of the equation.
- [William] Cosmic rays are not the only
threat lying out in deep space.
The bigger danger sits at the center
of the solar system, the sun.
It's a destroyer, daring us on our quest for Mars.
Getting by this ball of flames and energy
will require precision and luck.
(dramatic music)
The sun, centerpiece of our planetary system.
It gives life but in the case of a mission
to Mars, it can end life horribly.
- [Central] Attention, solar monitor
confirms a flare eruption.
- [Astronaut] Central, predict magnitude.
(coughing)
- [Central] X20.
- [Astronaut] We have less than an hour before
the proton storm reaches us.
- [William] It's the Goliath of the solar system.
Just one second of its energy could
power north America for nine million years.
Sometimes without warning the sun's power flips
out of control, solar flares erupt with the energy
of 40 billion Hiroshima sized atom bombs.
Flares precede solar storms more powerful than
10 million volcanoes, pushing charged particles
across the solar system.
All this poses deadly odds against
human explorers in deep space.
- These charged particles can be devastating
but a major storm without protection
could really cause acute illness and potentially death.
- [William] On Earth, a thick atmosphere and our magnetic
shield take the brunt of the sun's energy but even so,
solar events can sometimes disrupt global communication
systems and electrical power grids.
- Very high energy particles actually
made that transition, that transit from the sun
to the Earth in about a third the speed of light
so they were here in about 15, 20 minutes.
- And yet we don't quite know what causes that.
- That's correct, it's again, another big challenge.
- Yes, right.
- No space weather storms observed the past 24 hours.
Space weather for the next 24 hours is expected to be minor.
- [William] Clearly the sun must be
on our enemies list on the voyage to Mars.
In Boulder, Colorado, people are watching the sun 24 seven.
Satellites send back information.
The key is tracking the sun's magnetic fields.
They can twist so violently, the sun's magnetic
north and south poles trade positions.
- We are seeing a high speed solar wind stream
so we are seeing some elevated electrons over
the next few days that may impact space craft.
- [William] Forecasters look for sunspots.
The first sign that a solar storm is brewing.
- But there's so many variables.
We're talking about a distance from
the sun to Mars, over 140 million miles.
- [William] Sometimes solar storms move too fast.
Millions of kilometers an hour.
To get accurate forecasts of impending solar storms,
the mission planners would have to launch several
satellites designed to give weather warnings
ahead of the manned launch to Mars.
The best advance warnings solar storm forecasters
can give right now may not be fast enough.
- It's not quite adequate, is it?
- No, no. - To give 10 to 15 minutes.
They need more time to protect themselves
from that kind of radiation 'cause
again, another big challenge.
- [William] The science of solar forecasting is evolving.
Some of NASA's Apollo missions were sent up more with hope
than certainty about potential solar storms.
- Any future missions that we have involving
great excursions away from the Earth,
we're not gonna be able to rely on luck.
- [William] The odds against encountering
a solar storm on a 12 day moon mission
are slim compared with the months
of deep space travel to Mars and back.
- It's almost inconceivable to me
that we could have a Mars mission and hope,
simply hope that there wouldn't be a major solar event.
- [William] Daniel Baker thinks solar storms
are so dangerous they require a specially designed shelter.
One component is part hydrogen.
- Imagine a layered system with a heavy metallic
inner core into which people could crawl
and then around that might be lighter materials like water.
- [William] The hydrogen in the water helps shield
the crew members from the radiation.
They'll have to stay there for the duration of the storm.
They've been known to last for weeks.
If charged particles get through the space craft's skin,
they could overload microprocessors, shutting them down.
If a reboot doesn't get the system back online,
the Mars astronauts are in trouble.
Radiation hardened electronics with multiple
back ups are now in development.
The Mars vehicle is run by computers.
Blank screens on vital operation systems
could turn the space craft into a casket.
Perhaps the most ambitious proposal for beating back
solar radiation once again takes its cue
from Earth's protective magnetic shield.
Researchers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center call
this an electrostatic radiation shield.
Its center ring is positively charged.
The outrigger is negatively charged.
The two force fields should combine
to deflect solar radiation.
When the space craft gets close to Mars and slips
out of the inner ring and moves on to the red planet.
NASA had its first brush with a solar radiation
storm danger on the International Space Station in 2005.
The vehicle was hit by a wave of charged
particles packing millions of volts.
All on board survived but had an astronaut
been outside space walking, it would have been tragic.
Over the course of the journey to Mars,
space walks for maintenance and repairs
could be unavoidable.
- We have to make the call as soon as the flare erupts.
So we have to get to that point where we can tell
when that eruption's going to occur.
Hopefully an hour or two in advance.
We are not there right now.
- [William] Going outside the space craft.
Mars mission planners are doing everything
they can to protect the astronauts
and that may include replacing them.
Robotic astronauts will stand in for humans,
taking on dangers never faced before in space exploration.
(dramatic music)
Millions of kilometers from Earth with no hope of rescue,
meteorite debris makes contact with the skin of the Mars
space craft triggering a warning light inside.
Searing through deep space of 90,000 kilometers an hour,
someone has to go outside and take a look at the damage.
This will be the most dangerous space walk ever undertaken
in the dark and threatening vacuum of space.
- I'm out there, self-contained space craft, essentially.
Any space debris comes by, hits ya,
you know, violates the suit,
rapid decompression, you're gone.
- [William] Former astronaut, Jerry Linenger
spent more than five hours on a single space walk.
The danger level was huge but he had Earth to comfort him.
Linenger could even see his home state.
No one has ever stepped out of a space craft
beyond the protection of Earth's orbit.
If the solar storm warning goes off now,
millions of kilometers into deep space,
the crew will have to get back inside quickly.
(dramatic music)
Space walking isn't so different than deep sea diving.
If a diver comes to the surface too quickly,
the rapid change in water pressure
can cause decompression sickness or the bends.
For an astronaut, the same thing can happen
by simply suiting up for a space walk.
Pressure in the crew cabin is higher
than inside the space suit.
Nitrogen in the astronaut's blood can start bubbling,
doubling the victim over in extreme pain
and then unconsciousness.
If the bubbles reach the brain, it's instant death.
Space suit engineering is complicated.
In the 60s the Russians thought they beat
the bends but almost killed a cosmonaut.
Preparing for a historic first space walk,
Alexei Leonov's space suit was pressurized
to the same level as his space craft.
But Leonov couldn't fit back into the space craft.
His space suit had expanded,
trapped in space, he had to think fast.
Hanging by a tether in space, Leonov had to open
a valve on his space suit, bleeding off oxygen
until he could squeeze back inside.
Astronauts gearing up for Mars must get through
boot camp at the Johnson Space Center.
- It's much easier to practice and rehearse
a procedure here where we can stop if we have to,
verify something, change out hardware.
- [William] Canadian astronaut, Dave Williams spent
16 days on a space shuttle mission.
Williams trains others for space walks.
They practice on an exact replica of their spaceship.
- It's pretty amazing to train underwater
at this neutral buoyancy laboratory.
In many ways it's identical to performing a space walk.
- [William] Underwater rehearsals give astronauts
the feel of working in outer space but some
situations can't be practiced in water.
Every astronaut's nightmare is the tether breaking.
They would drift into the dark silence of space.
Dying alone when the air runs out.
The safety back up for this scenario is a rocket pack.
Updated from the original built 30 years ago.
And this is how they train to use it.
(dramatic music)
- Seven, six,
five, four,
three, two,
one, you have pitch maneuver
'till you're facing where you came from.
- When you come off structure and you're tumbling
head over heels, you need to be able to reorient
yourself to where you came off structure and start
getting back to that location.
There's really no other way to train that except
in the virtual reality world.
- Reach out.
Hopefully, just grab on the structure here.
Looks like we've got it.
- You got it.
Beautiful, 52%.
And it was four minutes, 56 seconds.
Plenty of battery left still, too.
Yeah, we're just gonna reset it.
- We take this very seriously.
It's very real when we're interacting
with the visual environment.
We treat it like we really would be flying it.
- [William] Rocket packs, a staple of deep space
science fiction are now the one thing
standing between an astronaut and death.
- They're always tethered in two different places.
If one tether breaks, you're still tethered to structure.
And this would be a last resort if it came to this.
- [William] Next step for NASA is to minimize
the human factor in the space walk.
The answer, a huge innovation.
A machine created to withstand the deep space
threats of a mission to Mars.
Meet Robonaut.
- We will probably never send people alone.
We're gonna send them with machines.
Machines of all kinds.
- [William] This member of a Mars crew will never
suffer from bone or muscle loss, cosmic rays
and solar storms but Robonaut
has some eerily human qualities.
- Opposable thumbs are known to be a pretty good gadget
and we should have them, the ability to grasp
an object designed for a human hand is a functional need.
- [William] Robonaut is tougher than any astronaut
but not quite as skilled.
For that reason it needs some human guidance.
A strong and silent type, Robonaut
will be the ideal work mate.
- So we've really designed Robonaut to be an astronaut's
assistant, to work with him safely.
That means it has to be able to handle
all the same objects that an astronaut would handle.
It has to be designed so that it can work
with the same objects without damaging the objects.
If it had steel fingers,
when it would grab a tool,
it might leave a little nick or a burr
on the handle of the tool.
Hand it to an astronaut, the astronaut
grasps it, cuts his glove.
So the robot has to be a good assistant.
It can't hurt the astronaut or else you're not gonna
want it to help you at all.
- [William] The Robonaut will be useful outside the ship.
- Wherever possible we would like to have the robot
set the site up first, get all the tools laid out,
get everything pre-positioned and then have the astronauts
come out very quickly, do the job
and then get back inside where it's safe.
Humans are precious.
We ask them as our heroes to go on these missions
and we're gonna give 'em the very best technology
we've got so they come back safely.
- [William] Robonaut will help reduce the chances
that an astronaut will be injured
or even die on the way to Mars.
- [Astronaut] We're in.
- [William] But it's impossible to reduce
those odds to zero.
Something could happen and they better
be able to deal with it.
(dramatic music)
Six people, two and half years together
in a space craft traveling at an average 90,000 kilometers
an hour going hundreds of millions of kilometers
to another planet and back.
Somewhere along the line, somebody is going
to need to a doctor, maybe even a surgeon.
- Hiromi, Hiromi look at me.
- There's always a risk of an emergency
situation arising in the space craft.
What happens if you get a gall bladder
inflammation on the way to Mars?
How do you deal with gall stones?
Toxicologic exposures, fire, smoke in the Martian habitat.
Depressurization, either the habitat
or the space suit itself.
- [William] The possibilities seem endless.
After weeks and months performing highly structured
activities, crew members must
never consider anything routine.
- Moving large objects around in the absence of gravity,
even though they don't weigh anything, they possess
a lot of mass, you can always crush an extremity.
We need to be able to take care of them
if they do in fact occur.
- This is Houston, go ahead, Alpha.
- [Alpha] Yeah, Bill's unconscious at the moment.
I'm gonna need to talk to a flight surgeon
as soon as possible.
- [William] This is not a space craft
but at this lab in Houston,
they are performing medical procedures
like they would hundreds of millions
of kilometers from Texas.
- [Alpha] He seems to be breathing a little bit but--
- [William] A patient simulator, a programmable
and realistic dummy capable of imitating 300 different
medical scenarios stands in for a downed astronaut.
- [Alpha] I'm not sure what's wrong.
- Okay, Alpha, I'm going to need you to do,
let's start with the stethoscope.
I also need you to get pulse.
- The person's having a heart attack, the person's,
they can't breathe, they're getting short of breath.
- [William] Students get their coaching over a headset.
To simulate the radio contact with mission control,
they'd need to handle a serious medical problem
on board the space craft.
- [Alpha] His pulse is real quick.
He's got about a 90 beats per minute pulse at the moment.
- I have to get you in that room
and I have to actually make you believe
that this patient is in trouble
and if you don't get on this right this second
and do the right treatment, this patient will die
and I have to make you believe that.
- [William] Doerr's astronaut students get 28 hours
training as a crew medical officer
but there's one thing Doerr's Houston lab doesn't simulate
and that's the weightlessness of space.
The push is on to deliver a Mars space craft
with artificial gravity but if the system broke down,
medical emergencies would have to be treated
in zero gravity.
To prepare for that possibility,
Doerr takes his dummies to the sky.
- This is an airplane that goes out 34,000 feet
and then when you come up and over the top,
you're at zero Gs for approximately 30 seconds.
- [William] They call it the vomit comet because
a lot of people get sick to the stomach.
Most get used to the jumpy ride but getting
even a simple medical procedure down is tough.
- In zero gravity everything's floating off.
You have to secure one piece under an arm.
You have to secure another piece under another arm.
You have to secure your own legs.
You have to secure the pack.
Otherwise things are just floating all over the place.
It's darned difficult.
If I tried to press on their chest,
I go flying off one direction, the patient
goes flying the other direction.
- [William] NASA isn't the only space agency
preparing crews for weightless medical emergencies.
The European Space Agency took it a step further.
Operating on a real patient in zero gravity.
The challenge, remove a non malignant
tumor from the forearm of a volunteer.
The team has questions.
In zero G, will the blood flow differently?
Will differences in blood pressure cause problems?
Can a surgeon perform a simple operation
while being weightless?
As the plane made its zero G, parabolic swoops,
the team worked in 20 second bursts.
Finally, after three hours and 31
weightless sequences, the operation was over.
It was a success although the patient was lifted
several centimeters off the operating
table during weightlessness.
A Mars crew won't have a full medical team.
When things get complicated, they'll need
to consult with Earth.
But with each passing day, radio communications
with mission control will take longer and longer.
- There could very well be situations
where we may need a surgeon on Earth
able to talk the crew medical officer
through performing a procedure.
- [William] But right now, communications between
Earth and a Mars space craft is compromised
by a time delay of up to 20 minutes.
- Imagine a surgeon moving an instrument
and waiting 20 minutes to see what the response is.
- [William] A Mars crew will not be able to rely
on expert medical advice from Earth.
They'll have to handle complex procedures themselves.
But the best protection will go
way beyond medical training.
Medical investigators will screen Mars candidates
right down to the cellular level.
Looking deep into their DNA.
One day scientists might even go so far as altering
their genes to create the perfect Mars explorer.
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Today, all astronauts are strictly monitored,
probed and prodded, screened for every possible disease.
- I'm sure they do feel like lab rats
but unfortunately that's what it takes.
- [William] Every precaution is taken
to make sure they don't carry any diseases
with them to the launch pad.
- We limit the exposure of the crew to people
so we don't get a cold or the flu or gastroenteritis
or whatever just so that we don't get sick
when we're in space.
- [William] But for a Mars crew,
this isn't going to be good enough.
Over the course of a two and half year mission,
a life threatening condition could develop.
- If someone's brain tumor shows up on the way to Mars,
it's not gonna be a good thing.
- [William] So medical screening has to go to a new
level for long duration missions.
It's called genetic selection.
It's a thorough examination of the candidate's DNA.
- We would use this genetic screening to identify
those people who more susceptible to the radiation.
So those tests will help us, they also may help us
in the department of osteoporosis, or bone wasting
which is a big problem for us for long duration space
and we would screen those people from going on a mission.
- [William] A space craft's limited medical resources
could be stretched to the limit during a long term care
for an astronaut suffering radiation sickness.
Cutting a vulnerable team member before launch
reduces the risk for everyone.
- We're not only protecting the mission
but we're also protecting the astronaut.
Not only in the short term to complete the mission
but also in the long term to have
a long and normal productive life.
- [William] If you want a machine to perform better,
you have to know it inside out.
Dave Williams believes medical science
is getting closer to knowing how to get inside
an astronaut's genetic code to improve their performance
and reliability in space.
(engine starts)
Williams sees a time when experts in space medicine
will operate on a molecular level altering the genes
of astronauts to make them more resistant
to the effects of space travel.
- We might actually have the capability of stimulating
a gene to maintain muscle strength, to maintain
the fastest slow twitch fiber ratio
that we need to be able to prevent muscle wasting
from taking place.
- [William] In the future it may be possible
for astronauts to be genetically doctored
to suit the Mars mission.
- Going to Mars will take a special kind of person
to undergo the training and the medical
screening to make it.
- [William] Whatever screening methods they decide to use,
space agencies across the world
will only select the fittest
for the first manned mission to Mars.
But the engineers and scientists must also be able to design
the hardware that will safeguard the lives
of their pioneering crew on the most
hazardous journey known to humanity.
- We don't wanna go at the herring edge of survival.
We wanna go knowing we can go back.
The way the first people came here to north America
from western Europe or from Polynesia to Australia.
We gotta build a system and that system has to be reliable.
- [William] New, more powerful engines will be called
on to carry the crew to Mars and back.
Getting a manned mission millions of kilometers to Mars
is a monumental engineering challenge and it will be met.
But accomplishments measured in thrust and speed
mean nothing if the people on board do not survive.
The weakest link as well as the greatest strength
of any successful mission to Mars remains the crew.
- Nobody's perfect, huh?
- [William] And keeping them alive
is the number one priority.
But some of the greatest threats to the mission
could come from within the crew.
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