“The terrain is very much how you would visualize Mars from what we see in the pictures from the rovers there — just so lifeless,” he told the Dayton Daily News “There’s no vegetation. There’s all red dirt and geologic formations.”
Pender, with seven other researchers, lived and worked for a dozen days in the American Public University System Analog Research Group’s first analog astronaut mission to the Mars Society’s Mars Desert Research Station in February.
Pender, who was recently selected for promotion to senior master sergeant, is assigned to SpaceX in Brownsville, Texas as part of AFIT’s EWI (Education with Industry) program.
AFIT is at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where Pender served at Air Force Materiel Command headquarters from 2014 to 2018.
Of course, there are extreme differences between Mars and Utah. On Mars, temperatures can sink below 200 degrees F and its atmosphere does not support human life. Earth is 160 million miles away, depending on the planets’ respective positions in their orbits.
But the research station outside Hanksville, Utah is a private facility that supports research meant to somewhat simulate those conditions. Nights and mornings are cold, at least in the winter. Terrain is unforgiving and mostly dry.
Those cold temperatures were perfect for Pender’s research.
An Air Force logistics planner, he was exploring the possibility of establishing supply caches that could help humans on Mars survive long trips from habitats. The notion of supply caches at strategic points was inspired by 20th century Antarctic explorer Roald Amundsen.
“At night it does get to sub-freezing temperatures,” Pender said. “That really helped my research as far as mitigating those risks, when it comes to managing resources like water, preventing them from freezing. I needed that challenge.”
“It seemed like a perfect use case to demonstrate for human exploration on Mars,” he added.
Caches would be heated, powered by solar panels, to keep water from freezing, as Pender envisions the possibilities. They would extend the range for travel, creating a “safety net,” he said.
“You know your range, but it’s off of the supplies that have been laid out on that route,” he said. “If you need to extend your range, you can just reposition those caches to go further.”
There were some strenuous experiments, including a three-hour “extravehicular activity” or hike. There was also a simulated “rescue” of a dummy on a sled. That was probably the most taxing task physically, pulling a sled through mud and dirt while wearing a Mars space suit.
“I was definitely sweating by the end of that experiment,” Pender said. “That was a lot of fun.”
AFIT said Pender is nearing completion of his master’s degree in space studies from American Military University.
“What’s cool is I got to share the experience with my Space X peers,” he said.
EWI fellows spend 10 months with top public and private-sector companies to bring back industry best practices, AFIT said.
Pender acknowledges that any attempt at Mars exploration will be challenging. But he is confident it can be done.
“It will be hard,” he said. “I do think it’s definitely possible. We put humans on the moon. With the technology that exists today, it is absolutely feasible to get humans on the red planet.”
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