Philosophy students correspond with NASA scientists on simulated Mars mission

Students in Dr. Milam’s intro to ethics in science and engineering course correspond with the professor's sister, Sophie Milam, who is a NASA scientist simulating a mission on Mars.

Students in Dr. Per-Erik Milam’s introduction to ethics in science and engineering class recently had the unique opportunity to dialogue with members of NASA’s HI-SEAS Mission 3 crew, which is currently simulating a mission to Mars. Dr. Milam’s sister, Sophie, is one of six scientists stationed inside a geodesic dome along the slopes of Hawaii volcano Mauna Loa for the eight-month mission, which began last October.

As part of the mission’s educational outreach efforts, the crew has communicated via video with schools nationwide. Students in Dr. Milam’s philosophy class submitted a series of questions on the topics of gender and diversity in engineering, safety and the value of space exploration. The crew’s responses are posted to YouTube.

SCIENTISTS ANSWER OU STUDENTS' ETHICS QUESTIONS ON: Gender and diversity Safety Value of space exploration

“Our collaboration was a great opportunity for these students,” Dr. Milam said. “The HI-SEAS project, and space exploration in general, raises a number of important ethical questions. The opportunity to converse with the scientists and engineers working on such a project about something like gender disparity in the STEM fields, or the value of space exploration, is immensely valuable.”

“The outreach is just something we really enjoy doing,” Sophie added. “All of the crew members have had a hand in an outreach project so far.”

Inside the dome, the crew’s research projects include planting a food garden, developing 3-D printing and virtual reality applications, creating fitness programs, mapping microbiomes and identifying orbital trajectories for missions to Mars. Each member brings a different area of expertise to the crew. Sophie, a mechanical engineer, specializes in the robotics field, with a particular focus on tensegrity robotics controls.

“Tensegrity structures are robust systems with a natural redundancy that makes them potentially well suited to exploration of hostile habitats including other planetary bodies,” Sophie said. “Ironically, the nature of the structures makes them difficult to design a controller for, and a robot without a good controller is pretty much useless. To counter this obstacle, my research, which is heavily influenced from my internships at NASA Ames Research Center working with the Tensegrity Team within the Intelligent Robotics Group, looks at computationally-evolving controllers that can ‘learn’ different walking gaits for their structures.”

In tandem with their individual projects, the crew is participating in food and team interaction studies, as well as testing prototype sociometers, mock space suits and a virtual psychology training tool.

Funded by the NASA Human Research Program, HI-SEAS is led by researchers at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Learn more about the mission at hi-seas.org.