NASA space scientist Douglas Ming is convinced that humans will not only return to the moon but eventually will land on the planet Mars.
"It will happen," said Ming, reached by telephone at Utah State University, Logan, where he taught seminars last week. "Whether the United States is the first . . . to do it or other space agencies, it will be done. I suspect it will be international cooperation."At the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, Ming is working to develop synthetic soils to be used on long-term missions. So, he is especially interested in the research that scientists at USU are carrying out on plants that would grow in the soil.
Originally NASA intended to cope with renewing air and water during long space flights by what Ming called "essentially just brute-force chemistry," in which chemical reactions are used to clean out impurities or change carbon dioxide to oxygen.
"In the last few years, NASA has taken on the stance that biological systems may be the best way to do this," he said. That is, air and water could be refreshed the same way Earth's natural ecosystems do it, with plants exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen, for example.
Research on how to do that is going on at USU, other universities and Johnson Space Center, he said.
"A lot of the research here at Utah State, of course, centers around wheat," he said. Other plants that may be grown in space in order to freshen the air on long trips include lettuce, soy beans, sweet potatoes, tomatoes and radishes.
At Johnson, Ming and his colleagues are trying to develop synthetic soil that will release nutrients slowly. "These are soils that we actually have produced in our laboratories," he said.
The synthetic soil will release the correct nutrients for crops over several seasons, to maintain growth.
"We use minerals that will slowly dissolve," so plants get food they need when they need it, he said. Some of the nutrients are synthesized in labs from natural minerals.
Ming believes that people will land on Mars by the first part of the 21st century.
"I'm quite sure that someday - probably one that I will not see - that humans will venture past Mars," he said.
He added that research at USU and Johnson will benefit earthlings too. Much of NASA's space research has valuable spinoffs, he said.
"Material that we are making now is being looked at as a slow-release fertilizer in areas of environmental concern," Ming said. The artificial soil could be used in place of dousing crop land with conventional fertilizers, particularly in regions that have problems with agricultural runoff pollution.