A Hybrid Power System for a Permanent Colony on Mars

Abstract

Since the dawn of humanity, people have contemplated the sky exploring the firmament. However, it was not until the twentieth century that humans were able to leave Earth and visit other celestial objects. In fact, nowadays, rovers roam Mars on a daily basis pushing the limits of science in a seemingly routine fashion. It is just a matter of time before humanity sets foot on the red planet with the aim of establishing a permanent colony. Such a complex endeavour demands continuous research, simulation, and planning. Consequently, this paper is aimed at starting a proper discussion about the configuration and design of a suitable power system for said Martian outpost. An initial literature review leads to the definition of a reference colony and its growing stages, which is followed by a revision of available energy-related technologies leading to a concrete design of a suitable electrical network. Lastly, the proposed hybrid power system is evaluated in terms of its reliability during the long-term operation under the extreme environmental conditions of Mars. The reference colony starts as an unmanned mission, as robots will prepare the selected location for the first human inhabitants. Later, it suffers several upgrades in size reaching a permanent population of 100 people. Therefore, a holistic approach is needed when designing the power system in order to ensure the continuous supply of the colony. Finally, the selected topology of the colony’s power system is presented.

Deployment Opportunities for Space Photovoltaics and the Prospects for Perovskite Solar Cells

“…Projects to land manned human missions to Mars are scheduled for the imminent future by SpaceX (2026) [17] and NASA (as early as the 2030s) [18][19][20] among other space agencies. [21] SpaceX's missions are part of an effort to develop a self-sustaining colony of 1 million inhabitants on Mars by the year 2050. [22,23] Figure 1a shows possible population trajectories of a Martian colony based upon SpaceX's announced intentions and planned passenger ship production levels [22,23] (Section S3, Supporting Information).…”

“…[22,23] Figure 1a shows possible population trajectories of a Martian colony based upon SpaceX's announced intentions and planned passenger ship production levels [22,23] (Section S3, Supporting Information). Given the highly speculative nature of such projections, the literature has tended to focus on developing colony models with less ambitious population sizes [21,24] (approximated in Figure 1b).…”

“…To estimate the power consumption of a Martian colony, we consider models based on Pombo [21] and Palaia et al [24] (Section S4, Supporting Information). The continuous power requirements for the models are listed in Table 1 (total power requirements can be calculated when combined with the populations shown in Figure 1).…”

Space Microgrids for Future Manned Lunar Bases: A Review

“…Therefore, additional AC buses with AC-AC power converters or solid-state transformers, for controlling the voltage and frequency, can provide a mass advantage. Thus, hybrid AC/DC transmission and distribution systems can also prove to be advantageous considering safety and reliability [71], [72]. Table IX shows a comparison among different power transmission technologies [65].…”

“…In conclusion, although the stability, reliability, service continuity, fault tolerance, power quality, and control system scalability are important in any power system, their importance is substantially increased in isolated systems. Specifically, considering the limited accessibility of the space MGs from the Earth and costly missions, these factors are considered as design principles of space power systems [71] and their control framework. Besides, considering that the crew might not be the domain expert, deploying autonomous and intelligent decision support systems is necessary.…”