Washington:
Living on Mars was not exactly a childhood dream for Canadian biologist Kelly Haston, although she will soon be preparing for it for a year.
“We’re just going to pretend we’re there,” the 52-year-old told AFP, summarizing her participation in an exercise simulating a long stay on the Red Planet.
At the end of June, she will be one of four volunteers to enter a Martian habitat in Houston, Texas, which will be their home for the next 12 months.
“Sometimes it still seems a bit unreal to me,” she laughs.
For NASA, who carefully selected the participants, these long-term experiments make it possible to evaluate a crew’s behavior in an isolated and confined environment, ahead of a real mission in the future.
Participants will face equipment failures and water restrictions, the space agency warned, as well as some “surprises,” Haston said.
Their communication with the outside world will suffer from the delays between Earth and Mars — up to 20 minutes one way, depending on the positions of the planets — and 40 minutes there and back.
“I’m very excited about this, but I’m also realistic about what the challenge is,” says the researcher, whose status as a permanent resident of the United States made her eligible for the program.
The habitat, called Mars Dune Alpha, is a 160 square meter 3D printed facility complete with bedrooms, a gym, common areas and a vertical farm to grow food.
“It’s actually a surprisingly spacious feeling when you go in,” said Haston, who visited last year before her participation was confirmed.
“And we also have an outdoor area where we will mimic spacewalks or Mars walks.”
![hc6iabjo](https://c.ndtvimg.com/2023-05/hc6iabjo_mars-habitat-texas-nasa_625x300_27_May_23.jpg)
The CHAPEA crews will live and work in a 1,700-square-foot 3D-printed habitat at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
This area, which is separated by an airlock, is filled with red sand, though it’s still covered rather than open air.
The crew will have to put on their suits to go on “spacewalks” — “probably one of the things I’m most looking forward to,” says Haston, a registered member of the Mohawk Nation.
‘Closely intertwined’
Haston wasted no time filling out her application when her partner told her about the opportunity.
“It aligns with many of my goals in life to explore different avenues of research and science, and then also be a test subject, and give to a study that will hopefully advance space exploration.”
The four members of the mission – herself, an engineer, an emergency doctor and a nurse – did not know each other before the selection process, but have been meeting ever since.
“We’re already really close,” says Haston, who has been named commander of the group, adding that she looks forward to seeing these relationships grow even stronger.
They may simulate an important reconnaissance mission for humanity, but how the housemates get along as they share mundane chores, including cleaning and preparing meals, will be crucial.
A month-long training is planned in Houston before entering the habitat.
A teammate may leave in the event of an injury or medical emergency.
But a whole set of procedures has been put in place for situations that can be handled by the crew themselves, including how to tell about a family problem that happened outside.
Insulation
What worries the Canadian most is how she will manage to be away from family. She will only be able to keep in touch regularly via email and only rarely via videos, but never live.
She will be outside and will miss the mountains and the sea, she says.
To cope, she plans to draw on her past experiences, such as a research expedition in Africa where she studied the genetic characteristics of frogs around Lake Victoria.
She spent several months sleeping in cars and tents, with four people, with no reliable cell phone coverage.
Feelings of isolation “are things that I think feel very familiar to me.”
As a specialist in developing stem cell treatments for certain diseases, she has worked for start-ups in California in recent years, where she also studied.
This mission is the first of a series of three planned by NASA, grouped under the title CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog).
In 2015-2016, a year-long mission to simulate life on Mars took place in a habitat in Hawaii, but while NASA participated, it was not at the helm.
Under the Artemis program, America plans to send humans back to the moon to learn how to live there long-term to prepare for a trip to Mars sometime towards the end of the 2030s.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)