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 For the most part, expedition leader Casey Stedman and his five
crewmates have stayed inside their 1,000-square foot (93-square
meter) solar-powered dome, venturing out only for simulated
spacewalks and doing so only when fully attired in mock spacesuits.
"I haven’t seen a tree, smelled the rain, heard a bird, or felt wind
on my skin in four months,” Stedman wrote in a blog on Instagram.
Stedman is a U.S. Air Force Reserve officer, graduate student at
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Worldwide.
“We are simulating a long-duration mission on Mars, with a focus on
crew psychology in isolation,” the crew said during an online
interview with Reddit on Sunday.
Crewmembers, who include a NASA chemical engineer and a
neuropsychologist at the Fort Wayne Neurological Center in Indiana,
have been isolated from direct human contact and have been eating
dehydrated and shelf-stabilized foods.
“We’ve basically been subsisting on mush. Flavorful mush, but mush
nonetheless,” crewmember Ross Lockwood wrote on Instagram. Lockwood
is finishing a doctorate in physics at the University of Alberta.
The habitat, which is outfitted with waterless composting toilets,
is basically self-sustaining except for a water resupply and
wastewater recovery every two- to three weeks.
Communications with the outside world have been time-delayed to
match the 20-minute travel time of radio waves passing between Earth
and Mars. In addition to a battery of daily psychological surveys,
the researchers tend to science projects and other studies,
including expeditions outside the habitat to scout Mars-like
features on Hawaii's Mauna Loa volcano. The landscape is similar to
a region on Mars known as Tharsis. For fun, there are movies, board
games and exercise, Lockwood told Reddit.
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“We don't have a lot of spare time, but I count work as part of the
fun as well. Planning EVAs (spacewalks), preparing food, even chores
- these are all enjoyable activities,” he said.
The operational part of the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and
Simulation mission, known as Hi-SEAS 2, wraps up on Friday, but it
will take months to synthesize all the findings.
The point of the project is to create guidelines for future missions
to Mars, the long-term goal of the U.S. human space program.
“Hopefully, when we send humans to Mars, we will have done enough
missions like HI-SEAS that we'll remember to bring the really
important stuff, like extra toilet paper,” mission support team
member Gary Strawn said on Reddit.
The simulation, which is funded by NASA and overseen by the
University of Hawaii, began on March 28.
(Editing by Bernard Orr)
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