ILO » A program to test space vehicles on Hawaii island to prepare them for missions to Mars or the moon is coming of age with a new state investment of $2.34 million to develop and expand the project.
Rob Kelso, the new director of the Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems, or PISCES, said long-term plans call for PISCES to establish a high-tech park in Hawaii for research into technologies related to space travel and colonization.
Nearer term, PISCES research will delve into a number of areas, including a project to develop a basalt-based, concretelike building material that can be used to assemble structures in space and back on Earth in Hawaii, Kelso said.
There will be continued testing and research of robotic systems being designed for use on the moon or Mars. For example, some of the equipment on the Mars rover Curiosity was tested on Mauna Kea in 2008 because that terrain is so similar to the basaltic makeup of Mars, Kelso said.
Another avenue for research seeks to develop new ways to extract resources, including oxygen and water, from the terrain on Mars, which has a chemical composition strikingly similar to portions of the Hawaii island landscape.
Kelso, a former NASA space shuttle flight director at Johnson Space Center, joined other researchers and space enthusiasts at the annual PISCES conference in Waikoloa this week for discussions and demonstrations of robotic equipment designed to explore challenging space environments.
State Sen. Will Espero, a sponsor of the bill that provided $1.8 million in construction funds for PISCES, said the project has local and national significance. The state provided another $500,000 for operations.
"We’re always looking at diversifying our economy, and aerospace is a niche that we can get very involved in where we can make a huge difference," he said. "This is about building our aerospace industry."
The PISCES project was founded in 2007, and this year was shifted from the University of Hawaii at Hilo into the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.
Kelso said the state is now looking for a site for a new research facility that initially would be home to PISCES and might one day become an "aerospace enterprise zone."
He said that assessment will take about a year with construction to be completed in about three years. Current thinking is that the facility would be built in the Hilo area, he said.
"Our goal is to become the preferred provider for space agencies and commercial space businesses around the world that are developing technologies to help enable and sustain planetary surface exploration," Kelso told PISCES conference attendees.
In the meantime, Kelso said the program plans to rent temporary office space in Hilo.
Up to this point PISCES’s main activity had been helping with robotics tests on Mauna Kea, but "the new vision" is to expand the research into four sectors, Kelso said.
Part of that effort would be development of basalt-based "lunar concrete" as a building material for Earth and Mars or the moon.
That concept stirred a great deal of interest at the state Legislature because of the potential for development of new building materials in Hawaii, Kelso said.
Research of lava tubes also has applications related to space travel, he said. Researchers have identified lava tubes on Mars and the moon with "skylights," or openings in the top of the tubes that allow light and other materials to enter.
Those findings raise questions about gaining access to the tubes, communicating from inside the tubes and navigating obstacles, and Hawaii island lava tubes are ideal for getting answers.
Another avenue for inquiry involves testing "habitation modules" and other equipment that would be used for colonization of the moon or Mars, he said.
Kelso also announced PISCES will host tests of the robotic rovers vying for the international Google Lunar X-Prize, a $30 million competition for the first privately funded team to send a robot to the moon.
Activities in Waikoloa will include presentations of a Japanese rover from the multinational White Label Space team along with a robot excavator from the University of Alabama.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY MARTHA HERNANDEZ / MHERNANDEZ@STARADVERTISER.COM
Answers — A. Mars; B. Mauna Kea; C. Moon
