For a mission as ambitious as making humanity multi-planetary, the challenges are many. But this gigantic venture is the brainchild of Elon Musk, a person known for overcoming challenges and accomplishing great feats.
Be it revolutionising space travel or propelling electric transportation to the heights it has reached today, the innovative entrepreneur is known for going against all odds. And so, landing on planet Mars, despite the obstacles, seems to be within his reach.
As experts have put it, Musk’s astonishing mission to colonise Mars demands swiftness and agility. SpaceX would need to focus on lightning-fast decision-making, learning from mistakes, overcoming hurdles and developing engineering technology in real-time to manage a Mars landing in projected time. Talking about challenges, successful asset management on this pioneering voyage is one of the many tasks confronting SpaceX.
This blog post talks about how the mission to colonise Mars and space travel, in general, need an efficient way to track and manage all sorts of assets involved. We’ll go over the importance of asset tracking, how it can be streamlined and made as advanced as it needs to be to successfully operate on another planet and more.
Asset tracking on Mars would be a big task in itself. This is because there are quite a few hindrances like the absence of GPS tracking abilities, the Red Planet’s dusty environment rendering barcode and QR code scanning redundant, internet connectivity issues and space constraints. Not to mention, the need for real-time information being shared across users to speed up operations and maximise resource utilisation.
Buckle in and prepare yourself for an interesting read.
Mars, Here We Come!
Asset Tracking for Mars Mission
Before we get into the ‘why’ of it, let’s briefly go over the ‘what’ of it for better understanding. So, here’s a guide to asset tracking.
Also known as asset management, it’s how you organise and keep a track of all physical items you own or need to keep an eye on. It’s just like inventory management, but here you’re managing the assets you use. When it comes to space travel, there’s a wide range of assets travelling onboard a spacecraft. This includes but is not limited to the following:
- Crew provisions including clothing and hygiene packages
- Food provisions
- Personal sundry
- Daily operations tools and equipment
- IT assets
- Medical equipment
- Fuels and propellants
- Construction materials
- Spacecraft spare parts
- Tools and equipment
- Mission-specific installations
- Oxygen tanks
- Specimen from Mars
That’s quite a list, and it’s not exhaustive. Personnel on board the spacecraft and back here on Earth need a platform to track all of these assets and everything else that needs to be kept track of. Asset tracking involves keeping a record of all items of relevance. This way, astronauts will not have to rely on memory to make sure everything is in order.
You can think of it as moving your house, just that you’re moving from the Earth to Mars. Like you need to keep a record of all your personal property, boxes and furniture to make sure nothing goes missing while you’re moving, asset tracking helps teams be certain of what items they have, where they are and every other important detail.
Why is Asset Tracking Important for Mars Mission?
The event of a successful Mars landing would be the first step into a much bigger venture, and SpaceX will have to make it count. This would involve getting as many assets aboard the Starship for transportation and installation on the red planet. The list of assets we’ve mentioned above is only a general overview of the different sorts of items, tools and equipment involved. The actual list would be much more extensive.
The difficulties in storing, packing, identifying and organising these assets to be transported to Mars are a few of the many challenges SpaceX has to solve on the go. Over the years, asset management has turned out to be a major logistical hurdle confronting space exploration programmes.
For instance, the International Space Station (ISS) programme has experienced complications in predicting spare part requirements, storing and tracking tools and equipment, and acquiring solid data on asset utilisation to make appropriate predictions to deliver required crew provisions. An MIT study on the future of asset management for human space exploration claims that these difficulties will be even more pronounced for space ventures going beyond low Earth orbit. It’s evident from past experiences that successful space exploration programmes are not possible without the right asset tracking tools.
The complications are not just limited to the transit phase of SpaceX’s Mars mission. Once landed on Mars, we need to find a way to maximise the utility of assets. Now that we’re not on Mother Earth, things can get really tough if we don’t make the most out of every resource available. Everything from expiring food, to assets in need to maintenance, the Mars team will have to be on its toes at all times to maximise resource utility.
All of this seems like quite the test. Managing assets on Mars along with the numerous other challenges faced by Mr Musk’s mission might seem too much to handle. But technology and innovation make everything easier. Asset tracking software is a specimen of functional software engineering that makes things much simpler, turning a seemingly difficult task into something quite fun and manageable.
How Does Asset Tracking Software Help?
Asset tracking software is a smart and efficient tool to track all of the assets you need in a streamlined, time-saving and effortless manner. With an easy-to-use, intuitive interface it’s a mobile or desktop application that lets you add, edit, and view essential details about your assets.
Each asset’s identity and details are stored neatly in respective asset profiles. These asset profiles are kept in an online database and can be accessed by authorised personnel from anywhere. This means that the asset tracking software can be used at the same time on both Earth and Mars.
When it comes to space exploration, one of the most common asset management problems is that the asset information for different departments, like food, crew provisions or equipment are stored on different databases. Switching between different databases to manage different items can be hectic. itemit’s asset management software provides an all-in-one platform to track all assets in one place. It lets you organise asset profiles into categories so you can maintain a high level of organisation while keeping things simple and easy.
