Project MADMEN: Proposed Analogue Fidelity Comparison to ALIEN Martian Mission

Project ALIEN (Alternative Lifeform Identification and Exploration Navigator) is a comprehensive mission architecture for human exploration of the Martian surface with the goal of searching for evidence of life on Mars, as designed for submission to the 2020 NASA RASC-AL Competition. This proposed Martian exploration mission has been restructured for feasibility testing in a Mars mission analogue facility on Earth. This paper explores the changes made to the mission architecture to accommodate an Earth-based mission, and the impact those changes are expected to have on the outcome of the analogue. Specifically, we investigate how closely the analogue simulates the conditions expected in a Martian surface mission. Time the crew will spend in launch and transit to Mars are not considered, as the analogue only accounts for the surface mission. Project ALIEN includes custom lander and rover designs; analysis of the impact of these custom designs to the mission provide a strong argument for the added costs, given that the full mission will be a flagship mission. Extravehicular activity (EVA) procedures developed for the analogue to approximate the search for life in Gale Crater will be used to demonstrate the feasibility of Project ALIEN's approach to microbe discovery. The mission will further refine the standard operating procedures to account for human factors considerations expected to be discovered in testing, such as difficulty using standard collection tools in EVA gear. The analogue provides an emulation of a Martian surface mission that allows for feasibility testing of experimental procedures and helps develop systems tailored to this mission's goals to enable a full-scale exploration of the Martian surface through Project ALIEN.