NASA has provided a sneak peek into its Mars simulation habitat, where four volunteers have now spent 150 days isolated from the outside world.
By living within the confines of the 1,700-square-foot Mars Dune Alpha habitat at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Ross Elder, Ellen Ellis, Matthew Montgomery and James Spicer are helping NASA better prepare for long-duration missions that will take humans into space.
This week the space agency released several photos of the volunteers who entered the habitat on October 19 last year.
Montgomery and Elder are seen conducting scientific research and playing table tennis with Ellis at a seemingly normal-looking dining room table. The fourth member of the group, Montgomery, doesn’t appear in the pictures, but we’re assuming he’s fine (if you think about it, he probably took the photos!).
NASA is carefully analyzing how the volunteers respond physically and mentally to spending so much time in a cramped environment.
During their time in the Martian habitat, they will also have to deal with challenges such as resource scarcity as well as maintenance and daily activities such as tending to crops.
“As the crew recreates life on the Martian surface, approximately 250 million miles away, communications with Earth may be delayed by approximately 22 minutes in each direction and may be completely blocked,” Elder said before entering the habitat. “For this reason, we may not be able to expect input from mission control in Houston during time-critical emergencies. Therefore, it is critical for the crew to rely on our teamwork, skills, decision-making and rapid action to ensure the safety and success of the mission.”
The facility has around nine rooms, a shared bathroom and an area for communal meals and social gatherings. Each member also has their own private bedroom.
There is also an adjacent area modeled on the surface of Mars where volunteers can practice so-called “Mars walks.”
Elder, Ellis, Montgomery and Spicer are scheduled to leave the habitat on October 31 this year, giving NASA much more time to understand what it takes to survive millions of miles from Earth.
NASA wants to send the first humans to Mars sometime in the 2030s, but it’s possible the epic journey won’t happen until much later. Currently, the only way to get closest to the Red Planet is here on Earth, in carefully controlled simulations like the one at the Johnson Space Center.
