Sunday 31 August 2014

Mars One's 2018 unmanned mission, its crowd-funding campaign, and a personal (minor) shock...

My blog post after a long time...

I will get right to the point. Mars One aims to establish a permanent human settlement on Mars, but before sending humans there, a lot of preparation and other work has to be done by first sending unmanned (or machine-only) missions to the red planet. The first such unmanned mission of Mars One is the "2018 lander and communication satellite".

As per Mars One's website, in 2017, Mars One will launch a lander and communication satellite that will reach Mars in 2018. The satellite will be placed into a Mars stationary orbit, enabling 27x7 communication between Earth and Mars. It would relay images, videos and other data from the Martian surface. Meanwhile, the lander will land on a suitable location on the planet's surface, and carry out demonstrations (i.e. provide proof of concept) of some technologies that are important for one-way human missions to Mars.

Mars One has not released too many details about the communications satellite. They seem to be focusing on the lander right now. Anyway, they say that design of the Mars One's lander will be based on that of the successful NASA Phoenix lander that was launched in 2007 and landed on Mars in 2008. Lockheed Martin was the prime contractor for the Phoenix mission, so it was also chosen by Mars One as the prime contractor for the 2018 mission. The lander's conceptual image released by Mars One is shown below:


In the beginning, Mars One needed Lockheed Martin to do something like a concept study for this mission. Obviously, Lockheed Martin (or any other company, for that matter) would not do it for free. I do not know the exact amount charged, or what process was followed, but the fee seemed quite a bit: Mars One organized a special "crowd-funding campaign" on the crowd-funding website indiegogo.com, with an aim to raise US $ 400,000 by selling various kinds of merchandise (ranging from Mars One community membership for US $ 2 to launch party access for US $ 5,000). On the website, they say it is for the 2018 mission, but obviously, much more than US $ 0.4 million will be needed for the entire unmanned mission. This initial amount is probably only for the initial study(ies) carried out and report(s) submitted by Lockheed Martin. Actual construction, testing, launch and operation of the satellite and lander will cost several tens or hundreds of millions of US dollars. (Take the Indian Space Research Organisation's Mars Orbiter Mission launched in 2013, for instance. At about Rs 4.5 billion or US $ 75 million, it was called the cheapest mission yet to Mars. NASA's MAVEN mission to Mars, also launched in 2013, cost about US $ 671 million.)

Mars One's Indiegogo campaign lasted from 10 December 2013 to 9 February 2014. The total amount raised was US $ 313,744 (about 78 % of the US $ 400,000 target). As it was of the "flexible funding" type, it received all the funds it raised.

My personal experience...

Though I supported it and, like all other Mars One supporters, did my bit to popularize the crowd-funding campaign (e.g. by posting about it on Facebook, participating in the "Thunderclap" event, etc.), I had not considered making any payment to it, chiefly as I was still a student then, and not earning any money on my own. But my father, who appeared to have noticed this campaign while browsing the internet for information about Mars One, bought a silver coin worth US $ 110, and did not tell me about it till August 2014! I wish he had told me before buying it, as then I would have asked him to make the purchase through my Mars One online account. Had this been done, I would have gained 220 points (2 points for every dollar spent) and my points score would have increased from 100 (default start value for all Mars One astronaut applicants) to 320 points!! :(

("Points" in the Mars One Community Platform show the "degree of support" to Mars One, and also determine how much weight your vote will carry, in any community poll. Greater the number of points you have, the more weight your vote will carry.)

Anyway, the campaign ended in February 2014, and I guess the funds raised were quite sufficient. (Mars One had also raised funds through other merchandise sale and donations carried out on its own website, www.mars-one.com. Total funds raised till end of February 2014 were more than US $ 500,000.) On 30 June 2014, Mars One released the Request for Proposals (prepared by itself) and the Proposal Information Package (prepared by Lockheed Martin) for the payloads of the 2018 Mars lander.

The 2018 lander payloads:

So, what are the payloads, you may wonder. According to Mars One's Request for Proposals, there will be 8 of them, and the total payload mass of 44 kg is to be allocated as follows:
1. Water extraction (10 kg)
2. Soil acquisition (15 kg) 
3. Thin film solar power demonstrator (6 kg)
4. Camera system (5 kg)
5. Open for random proposals from the highest bidder (2 kg)
6. Open for random proposals from the highest bidder (2 kg)
7. Educational payload (2 kg)
8. Winning university experiment (2 kg)

Of these, I was quite involved in stuff related to the last one. I will write more about it in my next blog post. (Don't want to make any post unnecessarily long or boring... Already, the number of viewers is kinda low... LOL.)

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