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4<br />
No.<strong>41</strong> AUGUST 9, 2018<br />
CLOSE UP<br />
WWW.DAY.KIEV.UA<br />
By Mariia PROKOPENKO, The Day<br />
some reason, when<br />
contemporary sci-fi writers<br />
send people to Mars or the<br />
Moon, they focus on human<br />
“For<br />
relationships, while Mars<br />
or the Moon itself is no longer a matter<br />
of science fiction for them. They<br />
consider a flight to the nearest star to be<br />
the most groundbreaking project. But,<br />
in my opinion, it is fantasy pure and<br />
simple,” planetary scientist Anatolii<br />
Vidmachenko says when I ask him<br />
which of the science fiction may soon<br />
become a science fact. Mr. Vidmachenko<br />
reads a lot, particularly the<br />
books of this genre, but he cannot<br />
single out one that especially impressed<br />
him in the last while.<br />
Mr. Vidmachenko, a professor and a<br />
doctor of sciences (physics and mathematics),<br />
works as chief research associate<br />
at the department of the physics of substellar<br />
and planetary systems of the Main<br />
Astronomical Observatory of Ukraine’s<br />
National Academy of Sciences. We talked<br />
about real, albeit remote, scenarios of the<br />
human colonization of such celestial bodies<br />
as Mars, the Moon, and Europa (natural<br />
satellite of Jupiter), as well as about<br />
the “asteroid taxi.”<br />
We spoke on the eve of Mars’ perihelic<br />
opposition on July 27. There is nothing<br />
bellicose in the name – at this period<br />
the Sun, Earth, and the “red planet” form<br />
a straight line during the course of their<br />
orbits, and the distance between Earth<br />
and Mars becomes minimal. This occurs<br />
once in 15 years on the average. It is the<br />
most convenient time to launch space<br />
missions to Mars, for this will reduce the<br />
spacecraft’s flight path by several dozens<br />
of millions of kilometers. This May, too,<br />
NASA launched the InSight landing<br />
module accompanied by CubeSat<br />
nanosatellites MarCO-A and MarCO-B<br />
(“Purely Ukrainian names!” Mr. Vidmachenko<br />
jokes) which will explore the<br />
ground and seismic activity on that<br />
planet. The module is expected to land on<br />
Mars on November 26, 2018, and the accompanying<br />
satellites will fly on. There<br />
are a lot of things to explore. The only<br />
problem is that Ukraine may end up<br />
short of planetary scientists due to the<br />
scanty funding of research. The following<br />
interview with Anatolii Vidmachenko<br />
is about this and other, more space-related,<br />
things.<br />
● “VOLCANOES ON MARS<br />
MAY BEGIN TO ERUPT<br />
IN THE NEAR FUTURE”<br />
The CubeSat nanosatellites, now flying<br />
to Mars, will explore its soil and seismic<br />
activity. What arouses the greatest interest<br />
of scientists in this matter?<br />
“There are about two and a half dozen<br />
volcanoes on Mars – the ones we are accustomed<br />
to, cone-shaped, where something<br />
erupts on top and lava flows down. It<br />
was believed previously that they are very<br />
old. But it turned out that the age of the<br />
rock on the slopes of the four highest of<br />
them, which was supposed to be billions of<br />
years, was in fact not more than a billion.<br />
This means that, in geological terms, a huge<br />
high-temperature mass flowed from there<br />
very recently. And this aroused interest in<br />
studying the planet’s seismicity – for if<br />
there are seismic tremors, these volcanoes<br />
can still erupt. One of the models shows that<br />
these volcanoes ‘slept’ for several hundred<br />
million years, then they ‘were fed up’<br />
with this and decided to get up. And they<br />
may begin to erupt again in the near future<br />
– at least some of these two and a half<br />
dozen. These eruptions are preceded by seismic<br />
activity – Mars-quakes. Therefore,<br />
one of the main objectives is to see whether<br />
or not Mars is seismically active.<br />
“Before this there was only a small instrument<br />
on one spacecraft, which allowed<br />
finding out whether there were any<br />
Mars-quakes.”<br />
Speaking of the colonization of Mars,<br />
can seismic activity be a complicating<br />
factor?<br />
“To prevent it from being a complicating<br />
factor, one should not land on these<br />
volcanoes. There are two and a half dozen<br />
of them, but there is also the remaining territory.<br />
The diameter of Mars is only half<br />
that of Earth, so you can find a place to live.<br />
The only trouble is rather a high radiation –<br />
it is almost twice as high as in the orbits of<br />
manned stations. Besides, the astronauts<br />
who orbit Earth are also protected by our<br />
planet’s magnetic field. There is no protection<br />
at all on Mars, for it has almost no<br />
magnetic field.<br />
“An astronaut can be exposed to a<br />
lethal dose of radiation in the seven or eight<br />
months of flying to Mars, when the probability<br />
of his survival is 50 to 50 even if solar<br />
activity is as low as it is now and there<br />
are practically no ejections on the Sun. And<br />
if some people have landed on the planet,<br />
they must immediately dig into the ground<br />
or hide in a cave. The flight to Mars is<br />
planned for 2022 [Mars One project. – Author],<br />
when solar activity will be at its highest.<br />
In such periods, astronauts tend to refrain<br />
even from flying around Earth. So it<br />
is better to do this either before 2022 or after<br />
2025.”<br />
● HOW MICROORGANISMS<br />
CAN “TAME” MARS<br />
Jupiter’s moon Europa: a place to live in tomorrow?<br />
Professor Anatolii Vidmachenko on the likelihood<br />
of colonizing Mars, the Moon, and other celestial bodies<br />
PLANETARY SCIENTIST ANATOLII VIDMACHENKO STANDS NEXT TO THE PAVILION FOR THE CELESTRON-40<br />
TELESCOPE AT THE MAIN ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF UKRAINE.<br />
CELESTRON-40 IS USED FOR WATCHING STARS WITH EXOPLANETS, ECLIPSING BINARY STARS, AND DISC STARS<br />
els were fitted with three or two only. Incidentally,<br />
some of these vehicles have<br />
been working on Mars for about ten years.”<br />
Speaking with journalists about the<br />
colonization of Mars, you once said favorable<br />
conditions could be created there by<br />
way of terraformation, “Earth-shaping.”<br />
How can it look like? How long will it last?<br />
“We must wait for two hundred thousand<br />
years or so (laughs). Indeed, it is quite<br />
a long process. Our team is now toying with<br />
the idea of disseminating microorganisms<br />
in Mars’ atmosphere, which could feed on<br />
carbon dioxide and discharge as much<br />
oxygen as possible. We believe that several<br />
dozens or hundreds of nanosatellites<br />
filled with special biomaterial, i.e. microorganisms<br />
that consume carbon dioxide,<br />
can work there for several dozens or hundreds<br />
of years, and, as a result, it will become<br />
warmer on Mars, water will begin to<br />
flood over some bottom lands, and atmospheric<br />
pressure will go up. For in the first<br />
several hundred million years the pressure<br />
on Mars was 0.4 bars, whereas it was 1 bar<br />
on Earth [now the pressure near Mars’ surface<br />
is 160 times lower than on Earth. – Author].<br />
This means it is possible to try to<br />
raise it again.<br />
“Viking spacecrafts searched for life on<br />
Mars’ surface from the mid-1970s onwards.<br />
We wished they would at least dig<br />
Photo from the website NASA.GOV<br />
MARS, AUGUST 5, 2015, ON THE EARTH CALENDAR. NASA’S CURIOSITY MARS<br />
ROVER IS TAKING A SELFIE IN THE BUCKSKIN AREA. IN MARCH 2018, THIS<br />
MARTIAN LABORATORY “MARKED” 2,000 SOLAR DAYS OF WORKING ON THE<br />
“RED PLANET.” CURIOSITY’S NUMEROUS SELFIES, WHICH HAVE HIT THE<br />
HEADLINES ALL OVER THE WORLD, HELP SCIENTISTS WATCH THE ROVER’S<br />
CONDITION<br />
Photo by Artem SLIPACHUK, The Day<br />
You once said in an interview that<br />
Mars is covered with very harmful and<br />
very powdery dust…<br />
“It is the so-called perchlorates. These<br />
chloric compounds are really very dangerous<br />
for breathing and very small-sized.<br />
While our dust, say, on the table is hundreds<br />
of microns, and some particles can<br />
even be a millimeter in size, the size of perchlotates<br />
is less than a micron, i.e., a<br />
thousandth part of a millimeter. Accordingly,<br />
they penetrate into all cracks and<br />
clog all kinds of filters. Only completely airtight<br />
stations can work on Mars. If a station<br />
has wheels, the latter usually have<br />
some fissures which these perchlorates<br />
will fill up. And while some of the Mars<br />
rovers initially had six wheels, later moddeep<br />
enough to reach ice. As it turned out<br />
later, they were very close to this. Their<br />
scoops could dig five to seven centimeters<br />
deep, while, as it is known now, frozen water<br />
lies at a depth of more than 15-20 centimeters.<br />
If they had reached water, the<br />
strategy of future explorations could have<br />
been essentially changed at that very time.<br />
Instead, everybody searched for water there<br />
from the late 1970s until the early 2000s.<br />
Now that water has been found, it is necessary<br />
again to search for life [incidentally,<br />
there is ice at Martian poles, and it became<br />
known in late July that there are under-ice<br />
lakes with liquid water on the planet. – Author].<br />
In 2009 or so, designers began to develop<br />
spacecrafts that can search for any<br />
kind of life, at least microbes.”<br />
● THE MOON’S VOLCANOES<br />
AND MINERAL RESOURCES<br />
I read that Ukrainian scientists are<br />
taking part in international Moon exploration<br />
projects which can be a steppingstone<br />
for more advanced explorations on<br />
Mars.<br />
“What is interesting in this case is the<br />
work of China. They decided: yes, Mars is<br />
good, but one must learn just to survive in<br />
conditions other than those on Earth. So<br />
they showed a very nice residential and research<br />
complex in Antarctica and said<br />
they would first test this kind of system on<br />
the Moon and then would take it to Mars.<br />
In other words, they are willing to participate<br />
in Mars-related projects, launch<br />
spacecrafts to and explore the planet at a<br />
short distance, but they postpone colonization<br />
for a later time.<br />
“A number of scientists have examined<br />
ongoing changes on the lunar surface at the<br />
Main Astronomical Observatory and the<br />
National Karazin University of Kharkiv.<br />
Those who worked at Karazin University’s<br />
Astronomy Research Institute mostly applied<br />
spectrophotometric and spectropolarimetric<br />
methods. And, for example,<br />
Vitalii Kysliuk explored the Moon’s figure<br />
at our observatory.<br />
“Besides, we have made several suggestions<br />
on how to watch the Moon change<br />
the tilt of its rotation axis by astronomical<br />
methods, installing a telescope in circumpolar<br />
areas or near the equator. We repeated<br />
the work of the 1960s, employing a<br />
new method, and showed that what used to<br />
take dozens of years to research something<br />
can only take a year now.<br />
“In addition, resources on the surface<br />
of Earth are running out, but they are<br />
available in outer space. The first source is<br />
the Moon. There are also a few asteroids flying<br />
not so far from Earth, and they can also<br />
be used to good advantage. Moreover, in<br />
some of them the deposits of metals –<br />
iron and nickel – exceed those in the half<br />
of Earth’s mines. And these asteroids are<br />
not so big. You can pull and work with them<br />
here. But it is also possible, instead of<br />
pulling over the whole rock, to fly there, extract<br />
what you want, and get the readymade<br />
material right on the spot. For example,<br />
you can make there and bring home<br />
several container-loads of microchips.”<br />
Can there still be any seismic activity<br />
on the Moon?<br />
“There is some volcanic activity there.<br />
When Apollo spaceships were flying to<br />
the Moon [there were six missions from<br />
1968 until 1975. – Author], they left some<br />
seismometers there. These devices recorded<br />
that, in addition to the usual volcanic activity,<br />
when the crust quakes, there is also<br />
the so-called impact activity – a space<br />
meteoroid hits the surface with a bang. Incidentally,<br />
seismic activity on the Moon’s<br />
far side, which we can’t see, is several times<br />
higher than on the side we can see.<br />
“In most of the lunar volcanoes lava<br />
flowed out into crust cracks and spread<br />
about, hardening on the surface. In 1999,<br />
a volcano was found on our satellite, which<br />
is a cone about six kilometers high with the<br />
Compton-Belkovich Crater. Lava could<br />
flow out of it about 800 million years ago,<br />
i.e. very recently in geological terms. Interestingly,<br />
what flowed out contained radioactive<br />
element thorium – a huge quantity<br />
of it was found on this volcano’s slopes.”<br />
● IN SEARCH OF LIFE<br />
ON EUROPA<br />
You and a colleague of yours spoke at<br />
the international scientific conference<br />
“Astronomical School of Young Scientists”<br />
in May about the possibility of colonizing<br />
Jupiter’s moon Europa. One of the<br />
advantages is water under a thick layer of<br />
ice. At the same time, it is difficult to reach<br />
Europa. Could you say more in detail<br />
about the advantages of this celestial<br />
body for colonization? What explorations<br />
of it are being carried out now?<br />
“It was known long ago that there is a<br />
10 to 12 kilometers deep ice layer on Europa<br />
and still deeper, from a few dozen to,<br />
maybe, hundreds of kilometers, there is water.<br />
However, ice may thaw in some places,<br />
which forms a small-size lens with water at<br />
a certain depth. As salt freezes in ice,<br />
melt water will be unsalted and practically<br />
potable. Therefore, it is possible to drill<br />
just in this place and get water. Gravitation<br />
is there in fact the same as on the Moon –<br />
one sixth of that on Earth. Hence, a float-