Sassari For now his attentions are those of all six-year-olds and today he will probably be chasing a ball on who knows which beach in the world. Or he will be dressing his favorite doll, or building the first Lego. Hard to tell. What is certain is that he doesn’t know that by the end of the 30s of this century he will be the most famous person in the world. She perhaps she the most famous of all time. Because the first (or first) astronaut to set foot on Mars has already been born, she is about six years old and within the next 16 years she will be part of the first human crew to set foot on another planet: Mars. It is not a fantasy from a science fiction novel but the more than realistic projection told by Tommaso Ghidini, director of the mechanical engineering department of ESA, the European space agency. These days, Ghidini has been scrutinizing the sky from his position at Capo Caccia: «Where I’ve been coming on vacation since I was three years old and where I believe my love for the sky and for space was born. We were coming to Sardinia the first time I saw an aircraft cabin and when the captain picked me up and made me touch the joystick, something lit up. And then Capo Caccia did the rest, with its brilliant night sky, where it seems that you can almost touch the Milky Way, so much is visible».
Doctor Ghidini, how important is space exploration?
“It’s crucial. The pandemic has also demonstrated this because all the telecommunications systems with which we have dialogued, with which our children have studied, come from Space. We at ESA have supplied aerospace tools that have been used for telemedicine, allowing remote medical diagnoses”.
But not only…
“Yes, ESA’s satellites monitor all 50 variables that determine climate change and provide data that define the phenomenon as unequivocal.”
Is this why you are at the center of attention in European politics?
«However, we only provide the data, we have no decision-making capacity. But in any case, I thank the 22 governments that finance our activity. And it is by exploring space that we will be able to answer the fundamental questions of our existence: where do we come from, how life was formed, are we alone and where are we going».
By the way, where are we going?
“On the moon. In 1969 we went there to be there, in 2025 we will return to stay there. The latest missions have projected us towards a very strong acceleration. The Orione module, the cornerstone of the Artemis mission, will bring the first woman to the Moon. With the “Moonlight” mission we will bring wi-fi and satellite navigation. We are building the infrastructure necessary for extraterrestrial well-being and we say that we will be able to use Whatsapp from the Moon. But this is only a part of the overall project».
And the other?
«Build a space station that will orbit the Moon and that by 2025 will have the first astronauts on board. It will be called Deep space getaway, which we can translate as “passage through deep space, and in addition to providing support and supplies to the human settlement on the Moon, it will also be the launch base for the mission to Mars”.
It looks like the plot of a movie.
“Effectively. Instead everything is real and by the end of the 1930s of this century we will have to be able to land on Mars starting from the station that orbits the Moon and some materials will arrive from the Moon that we will use for the spacecraft that will travel to Mars ».
What is the objective of the first Martian mission?
“Mars was an Earth, then it turned into a frozen desert. We go there to understand what happened and prevent it from happening on Earth”.
How?
“Completing what the rovers who are already on Mars and who will get there shortly will do now and in the future, but also the satellites in its orbit”.
Can you give an example?
“Certain. A European satellite in orbit around Mars, thanks to an Italian radar, has found a salt lake of 20 kilometers in diameter 5 kilometers under the Martian surface. It is shielded from radiation and contains mineral salts, it is the basis of life. Well, an ESA robot will collect the samples taken from a NASA rover, insert them into a container the shape and size of a football that it will launch into Martian orbit.”
Sort of like a Martian quarterback. But who will be the receiver?
“Here comes the fun part. The “ball” will be received by an ESA satellite which will have to catch it on the fly before sending it back to us. The “Mars sample return” mission will be technically momentous because for the first time something will come back from the red planet.”
And then?
«The samples will be able to be examined in laboratories much more advanced than those available in the rovers, with more sophisticated and precise equipment. We will go hunting for traces of life, current or extinct. But in doing so we will pay great attention to contamination, everything that arrives on Mars will be sterilized, but also everything that arrives on the Moon or on Earth will undergo the same treatment”.
Instead what will be the benefits of staying on the Moon?
«Our satellite offers many resources such as titanium, platinum, water in frozen form, which feeds life and can supply missions to Mars. And then there is Helium-3 in abundance and it is very important because it would be a clean fuel for nuclear fusion. There is so much of it that it could be brought back to Earth by paying the costs of the mission and definitively solving all the problems of terrestrial electrification”.
An almost perfect scenario. But space could also reserve us unpleasant surprises.
«And on one of these, ESA and NASA have recorded incredible success. Let me explain: few know that the probability of the Earth being hit by an asteroid is equal to that of a house fire. It is a certain fact, it has happened at least five times and it will happen again. The most striking impact is the one that wiped out the dinosaurs and 75% of life forms. Here, some time ago we deflected an asteroid about a kilometer in diameter, enough to generate a nuclear winter on Earth. We did it with the Dart probe, which deflected the trajectory of the Dimorphos asteroid. We are the first terrestrial species which, in addition to having an interplanetary development horizon, also has the possibility of protecting “its” planet from an event of this type».
Will we also have to protect ourselves from the sun?
«With the Solar Orbiter satellite we have arrived 40 million kilometers away from the Sun. We must protect ourselves from magnetic storms that can damage the instruments that regulate our lives, from compasses to PCs. We make measurements the solar plasma, magnetic field, waves and energetic particles of the solar wind. We are now understanding why the surface of the Sun reaches 5 thousand degrees while its corona reaches millions of degrees. To do this, we protected the satellite with the same paint that prehistoric man used in caves, i.e. burnt animal bones which, being already burnt, can no longer do so. And this incredible protection is as thick as a man’s hair.”