Watch the video report of Hamilton Sunstrand engineers testing their spacesuit for Mars exploration on Devon Island.
     

Their mission: Run the prototype through the rigors of real fieldwork on the kinds of rough terrain that astronauts may encounter on Mars. For a week, the engineers worked with biologists, geologists, others to better understand what working scientists will demand of a spacesuit, and to determine how the suit can be improved to make planetary exploration most effective.

Geologists are going to want to clamber up steeps slopes covered by loose rocks, rappel down ravines, stretch to climb steep outcrops and squat to pick up small specimens on the ground. Watching them in the field is vital to eventually developing a suit that will be safe and effective for planetary exploration, said David Etter, a system engineer with Hamilton Sunstrand, who works on NASA’s current spacesuit.

Haughton-Mars Project principal investigator Pascal Lee rumbles along the rim of Haughton Crater wearing a concept Mars suit designed by Hamilton Sunstrand.

Hamilton Sunstrand makes the life-support system and the fiberglass torso shell that current spacesuits are built around. It has been the chief maker of these components since the Apollo years.

"The Mars suit is very far off, but you’re going to have to go through a lot of reiterations of suit designs and concepts before you get to the finalized one that’s the end product," Etter said. "It's going to take a lot of work." Doing field tests is a necessary part of this work, he explained from the edge of the 16-mile- (25-kilometer-) wide Haughton Crater, as planetary scientists working with NASA tried on the suit for size.

Gordon Osinski, a geologist from the University of New Brunswick who is doing his doctoral research on the geology of Haughton Crater, was one of those who donned the suit to test out its usefulness.

"The thing about geology is a lot of the outcrops and the interesting areas we like to get to, is -- they’re inaccessible. You have to walk up steep slopes and rocky slopes to get there," he said. The slopes of hills and around Haughton Crater are covered with jagged volcanic rocks and fossil coral. These rough rocks are sharp to the touch and easily cut bare skin scraped across them. The slopes are buried in loose rocks that make footing unsure.

The mobility of the gloves was also a point of worry. "A geologist records a lot in a notebook. We draw pictures and take notes, so that’s something that you need to have quite agile gloves."

Initially Osinski said he was skeptical that he would be able to do his job while sealed in a cumbersome bubble suit, but wearing Hamilton’s concept suit changed his mind.

"I was really surprised and impressed by it," he said. While noting a few obvious areas for improvement – such as the way that the weight of the life-support backpack is distributed -- Osinski said he could easily imagine conducting geologic fieldwork on Mars in some later version of the suit.

For David Etter, an engineer at Hamilton Sunstrand, the process of putting a dozen people in the suit and watching them work was invaluable. "I know now what a geologist wants. He wants a ruler, he wants sample bags, he wants a Breton compass – I didn’t know what a Breton compass was. I didn’t know if he swung the hammer like ‘Yee Wang,’" Etter said, making a vigorous John-Henry motion, "or actually just tapped rocks."

Around Haughton Crater, many of the rocks are cracked and broken, so geologists just take short taps with their rock hammers to break off samples, Etter noted. "That makes me feel a lot better. He’s not going to take a big swing and put the hammer through the suit. So I’m learning a lot of what he’s doing, and he’s learning about the restrictions of the suit."

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Besides looking at the ways rock-hunting astronauts will collect specimens of Martian geology, Etter, and his colleague, Pete Kinsman, have been paying close attention to how well the suit works when test subjects get onto the four-wheeled all-terrain vehicles, or ATVs. These hardy off-road rovers are the main means of transportation on Devon Island’s wide-open landscape.

In order to explore effectively, astronauts on Mars will need something similar, said Pascal Lee, the principal investigator of the Haughton-Mars Project. Perhaps these rovers on Mars will be powered by methane, which can be produced on the surface from carbon dioxide and water, he said.

Pascal Lee takes the suit for a walk

"One of the things that astronauts are going to be using on Mars are rovers," Kinsman said. "We want to know how the suits are going to interface with those rovers."

After watching several researchers ride on ATVs while wearing the suit, Kinsman was encouraged. "I was quite happy with the way the suit subjects were able to get on and off the ATV today," he said. "They seemed to be doing quite well. There’s good mobility in the gloves in terms of manipulating the controls, good mobility in the boots to manipulate the controls."

A future Martian rover would need to be designed with the spacesuit in mind, Kinsman said. For example, the rover should be built so that it carries the weight of the astronaut’s life-support system backpack.

The Haughton Mars Project brings together researchers and technologists from multiple disciplines to develop the types of equipment that will be needed for future Mars missions. The interdisciplinary nature of the project is invaluable, said Nathan Merriam, who came to Devon Island this summer from Virginia Commonwealth University to test telemedicine. Merriam works in the Medical Informatics and Technology Applications Consortium, which is supported by NASA, to develop methods of practicing medicine remotely.

While at the Haughton-Mars Project camp, he tested equipment to monitor astronauts’ vital signs and respond to emergencies by bringing doctors together over an interplanetary online network. Sharing ideas with researchers working on other projects helped bring together specialty projects into a more cohesive whole, Merriam said.

"Normally we’re so insulated in our own research worlds, we’re so myopic in our view of technology in space that we don’t even realize there’s people out there who are trying new spacesuits, that there are people out who are trying to develop new geological methods," he said.

Talking with the Etter and Kinsman about Hamilton’s spacesuit, Merriam learned about technologies that may help his own group he said. He also explained that certain medical equipment would need to be integrated into the suit sooner or later.

"When you’re up in space for a couple days, it’s okay not to have to have emergency procedures built into the suits," Merriam said. "When you’re on Mars for three years, you’re going to have to have some sort of capacity for that – maybe we’ve got permanent IVs built into the suits."

Intravenous taps directly into astronaut’s blood could be reliable methods to keep astronauts’ blood sugar at optimal levels, or to keep them from getting dehydrated. Doctors could continually monitor mineral levels and red-blood-cell counts, Merriam explained, but such integrated technology will have to rely on continued cooperation between Mars-thinking scientists.