Remote Terrestrial Sites as Operational/Logistics Analogs for Moon/Mars Bases: The Haughton Mars Project

Mission planners for future human space exploration enterprises face several challenges in the area of operations, including coordinating the logistics and resupply of far-flung planetary bases. A number of logistics methods have been perfected by commercial and military experts, but these are not well understood in the context of space exploration. This paper describes a field expedition to a Mars analog site in the high Arctic, at which terrestrial logistics methods were tested in the context of (analog) planetary exploration. A comprehensive comparison is drawn between the logistics scenarios at HMP and a potential lunar or Mars base, in order to determine the extent of the analogy between them. It appears that the analogy is quite good in certain categories of supplies and shipment, but breaks down in others. When certain straightforward differences are accounted for, the data gathered from HMP can be used to validate and inform planetary base logistics models in support of future human lunar and Mars exploration. I.