Lockheed Martin Unveils Mars Base Camp For Missions To Red Planet

Lockheed Martin, the global aerospace giant just laid out a full-fledged plan for the Mars Base Camp (MBC) at this year’s International Astronautical Congress. They plan on making a space vessel capable of performing as a dock in space. The platform will allow other, smaller ships and landers to ferry passengers back and forth from this base camp.

An MBC is no new dream for space enthusiasts. The ultimate aim is to create a dock like loading/staging area for long missions to Mars' surface, effectively cutting travel costs. The information revealed by Lockheed Martin has taken this idea further and visualized a prospective MBC, modeled with the successfully tested Orion command deck for navigation, command and communication.

The plan is on course to take shape in the next decade. Lockheed Martin will collaborate with NASA and by 2030, aim to start launches on a small scale and slowly improve space efforts. The mission will be a step by step process with NASA poised to launch the Orion on an exploration mission titled EM-1 soon.

A separate vehicle has been commissioned to send people from the MBC to the red planet and back. This vehicle will be known as the Mars Ascent/Descent Vehicle (MADV). This vehicle will only be used to and from the base to Mars.

The video presentation also touched upon the propulsion system that this mission would use. There are two liquid Hydrogen and liquid Oxygen propellant systems which will be powered by water. Sources for water could even include frozen ice from asteroids. They also suggested a water delivery vehicle (WDV) when the water runs out on the MBC. They also said that these external pods would be run by other companies.

The interior of the vehicle will be designed based on the Orion deep-space crew capsule. The Space Launch System developed by NASA is queued up to launch a test Orion and by 2030, a whole Mars Base Camp. According to a report by Phys.org, the base camp would double up as a NASA’s pre-planned Deep Space Gateway. This would be orbiting the moon to serve as a dock for future Mars missions.

The two way access of the base camp adds a unique new step to space exploration. This base is capable of sending smaller vessels to Earth and Mars. This makes it possible to land rovers on Mars to collect rock samples and to send a vessel to Earth for water. It is the first-of-its-kind design for a space camp capable of delegating missions from within and also acting as a stopping point to make the longer journeys less strenuous on the machines and astronauts.

With Elon Musk adding that he hopes to conduct four SpaceX Mars missions by the end of 2024, Mars is starting to seem closer by the second. Two missions are touted to carry crew and two will be unmanned missions. All four are expected to be up and flying by 2024, the CEO said at the International Astronautical Congress. He also aims at the construction of a propellant depot, which will involve extraction of water and carbon dioxide from the local environment.