Only 4 people have ever stepped on Mars, and they will stay there for a year

NASA locked four people in an isolation room at Johnson Space Center on Sunday, where they will spend the next year as astronauts on Mars.

But it’s not about launching a huge rocket, but about something completely different.

So at a private facility at the Johnson Space Center in Texas, 4 NASA specialists voluntarily locked themselves in a 158-square-meter facility, Mars Dune Alpha, where they will stay for 378 days, more than a year. Their “base” simulates a colony on Mars, so they’ll stay to study how long-term survival is possible on the distant planet.

The main building was built using 3D printing of cement (a technology expected to be used in space exploration since building materials cannot be sent to another planet) and contains living quarters, laboratories, communications, a kitchen, a doctor’s office, a vegetable growing area, two toilets, etc.

In other words, it’s a complete “space base” which, however, wouldn’t be for the holidays. Since its crew will have to do a lot of work, such as growing plants, taking measurements, and space “walking” in outer space (enclosed and covered, there will also be exits through digital artificial reality), they will have to drill, to clean, to repair What breaks, to study, while from time to time artificial “alarms” will cause, for example with the failure of some machines, which they will have to deal with.

The crew consists of two men and two women. It is led by Kelly Haston, PhD in Biomedical Sciences, Engineer by Ross Brockwell with an MA in Aeronautics, MD by Nathan Jones and Chief Scientist by US Navy Microbiologist Anka Celario.

The entire facility is located inside an aircraft hangar at the space center and is filled with cameras that will monitor the “crew”. Their food will be largely dehydrated rations, such as those eaten by astronauts, while they will also receive at intervals, but infrequently, fresh food, presumably delivered by some space flight.

The available water will be limited, while of course a large part of the task aims to assess their psychological endurance in such a closed environment, their mood swings, and the potential tensions that will arise. For added realism, the four members of the expedition will be able to communicate with their families via email and video messages, but real-time conversations, which might take place in a human settlement on Mars, are excluded.

This is CHAPEA’s first mission and two more are planned, in 2025 and 2026, to study, in more realistic conditions, what it is like for a small human colony to survive in an environment as inhospitable as Mars or the Moon.

Source: Aviation Magazine / flight.gr