Applied Superconductivity and Superfluidity for Exploration of the Moon and Mars

The initiative for human exploration of the Moon and Mars presents great technical challenges as well as new opportunities for scientific investigations. I will discuss recent developments in superconductivity and superfluidity that can be applied to solve some of these technical challenges. This includes biomedical imaging of astronauts using an array of SQUID magnetometers; resource exploration using SQUID as well as a SQUID-based gravitational gradiometer; measurement of rotational jitter of the Moon and of Mars, for improvement in GPS using a superfluid gyroscope; and the concept of a high precision superfluid clock recently proposed for navigation at JPL. Physicists can also participate as explorers in the Moon/Mars initiative. I will discuss a proposed experiment to search for the postulated strangelet particle (a dark matter candidate) by using the Moon or Mars as a giant detector. As suggest by Nobel Laureate Sheldon Glashow, a massive (approx. 1 ton) strangelet can generate a trail of seismic waves, as it traverses a celestial body. The pristine environments of the Moon and Mars, with their very low seismic backgrounds, are ideal for such an experiment. Very sensitive SQUID-based seismometers can be deployed to increase the sensitivity of strangelet detection.