It’s the fourth (and longest) time HI-SEAS has performed this type of mission.
Advertisement
NASA’s year-long Mars simulation experiment has concluded today as six scientists emerged after spending 365 days in a geodesic dome set in a Mars-like environment 8,200 feet (2,500 meters) above sea level, on the slopes of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii. They could only leave the complex when wearing spacesuits.
The crew members did have access to the Internet and email, but there was a 20-minute delay to send or receive a message, to simulate the time it takes to transmit a message between Mars and Earth. “More than anything it’s just kind of keeping yourself from getting bored and dealing with cabin fever”, said crew member Tristan Bassingthwaighte during an interview on Periscope. This iteration of the HI-SEAS investigation was the second longest in human history, beat out only by a 520-day experiment in Russian Federation. The group of participants include a French astrobiologist, a German physicist, and a quartet of Americans.
“It actually works. You can get water out of the ground, even if it seems dry at first glance”. For one year, they lived just as if they were on Mars. “Something meaningful to work on”, Heinicke said in a video posted to Twitter on Sunday by the University of Hawaii, which is running the NASA-funded research project.
NASA’s Hawaii Space Exploration Analogue and Simulation (HI-SEAS) program officially ended Sunday, August 29, 2016.
The primary goal of the year-long mission was to study the behavioral effects of being disconnected from Earth. “I think the technological and psychological obstacles can be overcome”, she said.
NASA is studying how these long-term isolation scenarios play out on Earth – in a program called Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) – before pressing on toward Mars, which the U.S. space agency hopes to reach sometime in the 2030s. One could be heard complaining, “we were hoping for some sun” after realizing they were unleashed on an overcast day, NBC News reported.
The principal investigator for the mission, Kim Binsted, said that the crew members were looking forward to jumping into the ocean and eating foods that were not available during their year in the dome.
NASA can now send a robot to the Red Planet in eight months, but astronauts traveling to Mars face a trip lasting between one and three years.
Advertisement
Two more HI-SEAS missions are planned in January 2017 and January 2018.
