Six scientists entered a small dome near an old volcano in Hawaii over the weekend, where they will spend the next year living in isolation as part of a NASA-sponsored experiment designed to simulate what life will be like on Mars!
According to BBC News and United Press International (UPI), the isolation experiment will be the longest of its kind ever attempted and is part of the Hawai’i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) mission, a project designed to determine the effects of long-term space exploration on the human body and mind.
The six-person team entered the 100 square-foot home at 3:00 pm local time, and over the 365 day duration of the experiment, they will not have access to fresh air or fresh food. They cannot exit the dome unless they are in a spacesuit, and will have limited privacy, with just a tiny dorm room to call their own.
This is the fourth experiment to be conducted at the dome, which is located along the side of the Mauna Local volcano. Each of those missions have become progressively longer, and the goal of the $1.2 million project is to fully understand the impact of prolonged space travel, Kim Binsted, HI-SEAS principal investigator and UH professor, told UPI.
Meet the experiment participants
The team is comprised of a pilot, an architect, a journalist, and a soil scientist from the US, along with scientists from France and Germany. Each will have a small cot for sleeping and a desk in their rooms, and will be provided with food packets filled with things like canned tuna.
Carmel Johnston, a soil scientist from Montana, will serve as crew commander for the year-long mission, according to the HI-SEAS mission page. She specializes in global food production and sustainability, and previously studied the impact of permafrost thaw on trace gas emission levels in peatlands. Johnston has a master’s degree in land resources and environmental sciences.
German physicist Christiane Heinicke will serve as chief scientific officer and crew physicist, and Sheyna Gifford, a contributor to NASA education website, is the mission’s health science officer and habitat journalist. Pilot and former Lockheed Martin interplanetary flight controller Andrzej Stewart, who has worked on multiple NASA missions, is chief engineering officer.
Astrobiologist Cyprien Verseux, a doctorate student at the University of Rome who is an expert on biological life support systems for Mars exploration, is the crew biologist. Doctoral candidate Tistan Bassingthwaighte is the crew architect. Bassingthwaighte’s doctoral work will be focusing on designing a next generation conceptual Mars habitat, project officials said.
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Feature image: HI-SEAS/University of Hawai’i at Manoa
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