365 Days Of Isolation In Preparation For Mars
You are looking at a picture from Mars. Will we go there in your lifetime? Space—the final frontier. Boy is it.
Imagine committing your life to traveling to Mars. There’s plenty of buzz about it. In fact, a NASA isolation experiment began last Friday (Aug. 28) with six people locked in a dome for the next year in the latest and longest experiment by the space agency.
The intent is to evaluate how people would fare during a trip to Mars, which at this time is expected to take one to three years. The crew consists of three women and three men. The team has a yearlong supply of food and water. The cuisine, which the team must be able to store for months at a time, is similar to what astronauts eat.
The 36-foot-wide (11 meters) and 20-foot-high (6 meters) solar-powered dome was set up in Hawaii near a barren volcano and includes a downstairs area with a lab, a kitchen, a common work space, an exercise area, a dining room and a bathroom. Upstairs are six small bedrooms and a bathroom. The six people who will live together in it with little to no privacy are a French astrobiologist, a German physicist, an American pilot, a soil scientist, an architect and a journalist. Their first dinner in simulated space: cheese and turkey quesadilla and all the veggies.
Good luck!