UCL to Mars 2019, is the 212th crew to take part in the MDRS project since its beginnings in 2001. It is also the 8th team from UCLouvain.
The rotation that was assigned to us starts the 21th of April 2019 and ends two weeks later, the 5th of May.
Devices of interest tracking with Ultra Wide Band geolocation system
Here on Earth, GPS technology brought various tools to our society in a wide tech area. Up there on Mars, it might be as useful to implement GPS-like devices and keeping track of what’s going on in our new Martian civilization. Nowadays, there are different geolocation technologies for different purposes. In regard of the relatively […]
Deployment of a swarm of CubeLands
Mars presents a dynamical environment that cannot be fully described by measures taken by a small number of probes. However, current Martian missions are very costly and do not allow to cover large region of its surface. In order to get a more comprehensive view of Mars climate evolution, we propose to rely on miniaturized […]
Enhancing leguminous plant nutrition via mycorrhiza symbiosis in a Martian simulated environment
As a one-way trip to Mars is estimated at 6 months at the shortest, a round-trip mission to the Red planet could last years. Therefore, setting up technologies to grow food in complete autonomy seems crucial. One main issue remains enhancing plant nutrition and increasing their resistance to stress and drought. To elucidate that point, we […]
Spirulina as space food
As water is a limiting factor on Mars, lots of questions related to how to grow food on the Red Planet remain unsolved. On this purpose, current scientific researches focus on developing technologies to grow highly nutritive food requiring small amount of water. One possible option is spirulina! Indeed, those cyanobacteria are highly prospective for […]
Martian Constitution
His research will consist in the drafting of a Martian constitution. Today, no rules or legislation apply to Mars. However, law is necessary to organise the human society, as Martian missions are going to develop. He would like to draft it together with the crew because a text of such importance needs to gather all different […]
Impact of a Martian lifestyle on sleep quality
A correct and regular sleep is essential for the recuperative power of the crew. For a long-term mission, the recuperative power is crucial for the preservation of the reflexes and the cognitive functions of the members of the crew. The particular conditions of such a mission which are among others the confinement, the seclusion and the […]
Fully autonomous 3D mapping
We plan to improve usability and efficiency of drone 3D mapping to the next level. The first step will be to gather data and software used by our predecessor Bastien Baix from the UCL to Mars 2018 mission. Mapping techniques are constantly evolving and updating the software behind the project is necessary. The core idea will […]
Automating high-precision tasks with drones
While the GPS may be enough for a variety of tasks, when it comes to precisely checking tank levels or approaching a precise object on the ground, it’s just not precise enough. First, we need to gather a list of these tasks and evaluate what precision they would need (an error of less than 1 […]
Development of a telescope for cosmic muon flux and density measurements
This project is based on the upgrading of a compact telescope based on small and gastight Glass Resistive Gas Chambers (“minigRPC”) build last year by Sophie Wuyckens and is aimed at performing a feasibility study of possible research on Mars geology. The first part of the project will be an improvement of the software used […]