Years before a mission even begins, NASA reaches out to the best minds of our generation—thought leaders at the cutting edge of astrophysics, engineering, mathematics, and even business analytics. Which is how Assistant Professor Beste Basciftci got involved in researching humans exploring the next frontier: planet Mars. 

Basciftci, an award-winning researcher of terrestrial transportation systems, is part of a NASA-backed team researching the logistics behind setting up a supply stop/habitat, which they call a SmartHab, on the surface or in the orbit of Mars. The ground rules are simple: Keep humans alive when they are there. And keep the ship operable when they’re not. 

But if humans are to explore and someday even colonize the Red Planet, it’s going to take a lot of spaceship maintenance and spare parts, not to mention water, food, and oxygen. This SmartHab is planned to host human as well as robotic crew and will allow missions to retrieve needed parts without flying all the way back to Earth. It will also be intelligent, self-aware, and self-sufficient enough to function safely when uncrewed—unlike the International Space Station, which requires humans to perform maintenance. 

“NASA has asked us to estimate a supply ship to arrive at the SmartHab every nine months,” Basciftci said. “Our research team aims to determine what supplies need to go on each of these trips, not only for human survival, but also for the least amount of downtime for any given machine, project, or mission.” 

“It can take 5.5-7.5 months to get to Mars, so it is obviously not an on-demand supply chain,” she said. 

“That would create way too much downtime, so we have a long planning horizon. Our optimization model takes the predicted lifespan of thousands of parts and adds variability and failure. We must try to get the replacement parts on the SmartHab before they are needed. Our model also takes into account multiple missions happening at the same time and space and weight restrictions for each launch.” 

The findings of Basciftci and her co-authors from Georgia Tech, Professor Nagi Gebraeel and Ph.D. student Heraldo Rozas, appear in Acta Astronautica, the official journal of the International Academy of Astronautics. 

Basciftci’s participation in this project, officially named Habitats Optimized for Missions of Exploration (HOME), adds to the University of Iowa’s space legacy, which began with Astronomy and Physics Professor James Van Allen. Known as “the father of scientific space exploration,” Van Allen taught at the University of Iowa from 1951 to 1985, during which time he discovered the Van Allen radiation belts and engineered particle detectors for 20 spacecraft projects, including the first flights to Mars and beyond. 

NASA expects to send astronauts to Mars in the 2030s. Deployment of SmartHabs like the one in this feasibility study will come in the years after.

This article appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of Tippie Magazine.