Living on Mars wasn’t exactly a childhood dream for Canadian biologist Kelly Haston, though she’ll soon spend a year preparing for just that.
Living on Mars wasn’t exactly a childhood dream for Canadian biologist Kelly Haston, though she’ll soon spend a year preparing for just that.
« We are just going to pretend that we’re there, » the 52-year-old told AFP, summing up her participation in an exercise simulating a long stay on the Red Planet.
At the end of June, she will be one of the four volunteers stepping into a Martian habitat in Houston, Texas that will be their home for the next 12 months.
« It still sometimes seems a bit unreal to me, » she laughs.
For NASA, which has carefully selected the participants, these long-term experiments make it possible to evaluate the behavior of a crew in an isolated and confined environment, ahead of a real mission in future.
Participants will face equipment failures and water limitations, the space agency has warned—as well as some « surprises, » according to Haston.
Their communications with the outside world will suffer from the delays that exist between Earth and Mars—up to 20 minutes one-way, depending on the planets’ positions—and 40 minutes two ways.
« I’m very excited about this, but I’m also realistic for what the challenge is, » says the research scientist, whose status as a permanent resident of the United States made her eligible for the program.
The habitat, dubbed Mars Dune Alpha, is a 3D printed 1,700 square-foot (160 square-meter) facility, complete with bedrooms, a gym, common areas, and a vertical farm to grow food.
