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Astronauts train to scale a Mars volcano at an analogue site in France. Lava tubes that crisscross the Martian surface might provide sanctuaries for the first human explorers on the Red Planet. (Photo by Francis DEMANGE\/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images<\/p>\n
As SpaceX races to test and perfect the Starship super-capsules slated to speed the first astronauts to Mars, scientists are floating a sensational venue for the Martian base camp: inside an inactive volcano transformed into a sanctuary for explorers.<\/p>\n
Unlike the Earth, whose massive magnetic field protects life and DNA against high-energy cosmic particles shot off by exploding stars, or protons blasted out by the Sun, Mars is sporadically pelted by these celestial bullets, which could threaten any life forms transplanted onto its orange-red dunes.<\/p>\n
But now European and American scientists are exploring whether the first human Martians could find refuge via dormant volcanos scattered across the Red Planet, inside lava tubes that criss-cross the Mars underground.<\/p>\n
As lava tubes are sighted by European Space Agency and NASA orbiters circling the planet, leading-edge experts in space robotics have created an interlinked team of robots that can be lofted to Mars to reconnoiter and map the most promising basaltic caverns before the first astronauts ever touch down.<\/p>\n
Parallel volcanic eruptions across the once-twin planets likely created comparable lava tunnels on Earth and on Mars, otherworldly grottoes that can be surveyed by highly autonomous robots, says Carlos Jesus P\u00e9rez-del-Pulgar, a vanguard space robotics researcher at the University of Malaga, on the southern Spanish seacoast.<\/p>\n
Due to the risks of exploring volcanic underworlds, especially on another planet, he says, robotic advance scouts can spearhead these expeditions before their human allies arrive.<\/p>\n
P\u00e9rez-del-Pulgar\u2019s contingent of space roboticists, he tells me in an interview, recently tested a mission concept that could pave the way for ESA, NASA, or SpaceX to fly a squad of AI-enhanced collaborating robots to independently explore and image lava tubes on Mars, and send back intricate 3D models of each site.<\/p>\n
In this demo expedition, his group deployed hyper-tech robotic explorers to map a lava tube on a Mars analog site, in the Spanish Canary Islands, which, like the Hawaiian archipelago, were produced via a series of volcanic eruptions.<\/p>\n
Their three robotic rovers, outfitted with an array of cutting-edge imagery gear including time-of-flight cameras, helped the team generate an atlas of 3D maps of the site – from its skylight to its inner passageways.<\/p>\n
P\u00e9rez-del-Pulgar, a renowned scholar<\/a> at the university\u2019s Space Robotics Laboratory, recounts that one bot, called Coyote III, rappelled from a skylight into the lava tube\u2019s interior as its partner, SherpaTT, acted as an anchor and sentinel from above.<\/p>\n The leading-edge SherpaTT was part of team of robots deployed to autonomously map a lava tube at a Mars analogue site in the Spanish Canary Islands. The rover, developed by the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), could one day be sent to Mars to scout for volcanic sanctuaries for human explorers. (Photo by Michael Bahlo\/picture alliance via Getty Images)<\/p>\n picture alliance via Getty Images<\/p>\n Similar detachments of autonomous robots could be dispatched to chart volcanic chambers near candidate landing sites on Mars to find potential havens for early human explorers, he says.<\/p>\n These subterranean sanctums could protect against not only hazardous radiation, but also micrometeorites and global dust storms that might threaten spacefarers living on the surface of Mars, says P\u00e9rez-del-Pulgar, who has also conducted research for the European Space Agency on developing a highly intelligent robot for its 2028 ExoMars mission.<\/p>\n He says the field test in the volcanic grottoes on the Spanish island of Lanzarote was funded by the European Commission, as part of a series of studies on \u201cCooperative Robots for Extreme Environments.\u201d<\/p>\n Humans are already transforming lava tubes on Earth. This one, near the volcanic chambers explored by space robots on the Spanish island of Lanzarote, has been reengineered into a concert hall and theater. (Photo by: Geography Photos\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)<\/p>\n Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/p>\n His team\u2019s breakthroughs in collaborative robotic exploration of a remote volcanic tunnel, in an operation that was largely autonomous and could be replicated in a future interplanetary mission<\/a>, were recently featured in the prestigious journal Science Robotics, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.<\/p>\n Some lava tubes that wrap across the surface of the Red Planet could make perfect protective shells to position prefabricated human habitats transported aboard the massive Starship capsules that are now counting down to descending on Mars.<\/p>\n Yet each individual lava structure needs to be surveyed and imaged\u2014in three dimensions\u2014to determine its suitability for a human outpost, P\u00e9rez-del-Pulgar says.<\/p>\n He says his team of robotic photographers and 3D mapmakers could move from site to site, sending back a sequence of high-resolution models of Martian caverns to be explored by space mission planners, and by Mars-bound astronauts, back on Earth.<\/p>\n The Coyote III space robot rappels through a skylight, into a lava tube, in a precursor mission to scouting lava tunnels that crisscross the Martian dunes Photo by Tom Becker at DFKI<\/p>\n Photo by Tom Becker and courtesy of Raul Dominguez and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)<\/p>\n Sketching out the potential for droid cartographers to transmit their renderings of volcanic structures from another planetary body was the primary objective of his team\u2019s path-breaking mission on Lanzarote, he says.<\/p>\n Ironically, he adds, the experimental technologies deployed on these futuristic treks are all aimed at helping humans leap ahead into the remote past, when they lived in caves and fire was the technology of the times.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is said we will go back to caves as it was in the past if we want to survive on remote planets,\u201d he muses.<\/p>\n Back on Earth, ancient Hawaiians discovered that tubes sculpted by lava flows<\/a> \u201ccould be used as shelter from both the elements and human enemies,\u201d say scientists at the American National Park Service.<\/p>\n Ancient Hawaiians discovered that tubes sculpted by lava flows \u201ccould be used as shelter from both the elements and human enemies,\u201d say U.S. National Park Service scientists. Shown here is the Thurston Lava Tube inside Hawaii’s Volcanoes National Park. (Photo by: Sergi Reboredo\/VW PICS\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)<\/p>\n Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/p>\n \u201cThese caves have also had great cultural importance,\u201d they add, and \u201clava tubes were also central in some ceremonies.\u201d<\/p>\n With their robot-led discoveries inside a Canary volcano, P\u00e9rez-del-Pulgar says, \u201cWe did the first step to demonstrate enabling technologies that could support future lava cave exploration missions on remote planets.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet he adds his robotic scouts, and their ability to closely cooperate, will have to be perfected before they descend on Mars, whose distance from the Earth, at up to 20-plus light-minutes, will rule out tele-operating the bots from planet to planet.<\/p>\n Ra\u00fal Dom\u00ednguez<\/a>, co-leader of the robotic demo excursion, tells me in an interview that the future 3D imagery gathered by Martian squads of surveyors, along with their maps, could be transformed into virtual reality simulations of each lava tube site that aeronauts back on Earth could use to train for their Mars landings.<\/p>\n Architects could study these simulations to design specially tailored habitats for each chamber, while NASA and ESA planners select the most outstanding sites to land near.<\/p>\n After following the astonishing flights pioneered by NASA\u2019s Ingenuity helicopter across Mars, his team is sure to add leading-edge drones to its robotic Mars-bound ensembles, adds Dom\u00ednguez, who is based at the Robotics Innovation Center, part of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, which also designed the SherpaTT and Coyote III rovers.<\/p>\n Flying cameramen soaring above volcanic tunnels on Mars, he adds, could map the surroundings and skylight of each outcropping, or even enter the submerged channel to image its interior.<\/p>\n Leon Danter, a software engineer specializing in the simulation of space robots<\/a> and missions at the Robotics Innovation Center, based in the German city of Bremen, says while lava tubes hold great promise to shield human quarters on Mars, each one needs to be carefully inspected for safety and stability\u2014by robotic surveyors\u2014before any astronaut dares enter.<\/p>\n Yet he\u2019s confident, Danter tells me in an interview, that these robotic forerunners will pave the way for human explorers to shelter inside underground oases while launching the first phase of their treks across Mars.<\/p>\n When squadrons of intelligent, interconnected robots begin transmitting their high-resolution atlases of volcanic Martian havens\u2014to mission controllers a planet away\u2014he predicts, they will mark a new era of Mars discoveries.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, even before SpaceX\u2019s next-generation Super Heavy rocket and Starship upper stage both made picture-perfect splashdowns during the ship\u2019s latest demo flight in August, founder Elon Musk predicted the globe\u2019s fastest-expanding spacecraft outfit could launch Mars-bound spacefarers five years from now.<\/p>\n During a fantastical overview on his crusade to colonize Mars earlier this year, Musk signaled he hoped to launch the first flotilla of Starships\u2014with robotic shipmates\u2014by the close of 2026.<\/p>\n SpaceX founder Elon Musk has predicted his next-generation Starship super-capsules could launch astronauts to Mars five years from now. (Marie D. De Jes\u00fas\/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)<\/p>\n Houston Chronicle via Getty Images<\/p>\n Robots leading the next flights, two years later, would \u201cprep landing areas\u201d for the first touchdown of humans.<\/p>\n By 2031, they would begin \u201cresource mining and propellant generation, build roads and pads, habitat construction, [and] increase power generation and storage,\u201d according to graphics projected onto a super-screen that backdropped Musk as he laid out his Mars masterplan.<\/p>\n \u201cSpaceX reached a very important milestone with the latest successful 10th flight test of the Starship, which is the largest spacecraft ever built,\u201d says Carlos P\u00e9rez-del-Pulgar.<\/p>\n The Starship, the most technologically advanced space capsule ever designed on Earth, \u201cwill allow SpaceX to carry super heavy payloads with the objective of reaching Mars.\u201d<\/p>\n That means if ESA, NASA or SpaceX commissions a precursor mission to chart the great volcanos of Mars, via the 2028 Starship launches, he says, his constellation of space roboticists could join forces with a wider coalition of inventors and mission planners to craft a brigade of robotic scouts and mapmakers.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will continue,\u201d he says, \u201cadvancing the already developed and tested technologies to be used in the next planetary exploration mission that, for sure, will be focused on the exploration of lava caves.\u201d<\/p>\n Pete Worden, a leading American astrophysicist and onetime director of the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, says charting these volcano-shaped sanctuaries will be just the first step in the human invasion of Mars.<\/p>\n Worden tells me in an interview that Harvard scholar Robin Wordsworth, his co-author on a recent Red Planet study and one of the top American experts on terraforming Mars<\/a>, is now designing compact astronaut outposts that can be positioned inside lava tubes and speedily inhabited.<\/p>\n Yet the next phase of colonizing Mars, he predicts, will see the construction of colossal crystalline geodesic domes to host hyper-tech cities and Eden-like gardens<\/a>, all part of a new branch of civilization.<\/p>\n