Sunday Times 2
Researchers practise living on Mars – without leaving Earth
View(s):CAPE CANAVERAL Fla (Reuters) – For the past four months, a team of researchers have been living in a mockup Mars habitat on a Hawaiian volcano practising isolated living on the Red Planet.
For the most part, expedition leader Casey Stedman and his five crewmates have stayed inside their 1,000-square foot (93-square meter) solar-powered dome, venturing out only for simulated spacewalks and doing so only when fully attired in mock spacesuits.
“I haven’t seen a tree, smelled the rain, heard a bird, or felt wind on my skin in four months,” Stedman wrote in a blog on Instagram. Stedman is a U.S. Air Force Reserve officer, graduate student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Worldwide.
“We are simulating a long-duration mission on Mars, with a focus on crew psychology in isolation,” the crew said during an online interview with Reddit on Sunday.
Crewmembers, who include a NASA chemical engineer and a neuropsychologist at the Fort Wayne Neurological Center in Indiana, have been isolated from direct human contact and have been eating dehydrated and shelf-stabilized foods.
“We’ve basically been subsisting on mush. Flavorful mush, but mush nonetheless,” crewmember Ross Lockwood wrote on Instagram. Lockwood is finishing a doctorate in physics at the University of Alberta.
The habitat, which is outfitted with waterless composting toilets, is basically self-sustaining except for a water resupply and wastewater recovery every two- to three weeks.