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A Dry Run at Mars

Scientists prepare for the challenges of sending humans to Mars by staging simulations right here on Earth

01 Jun 2009

SUIT UP: This is not a Hollywood set, it’s the Utah desert. For nearly a decade, scientists and Mars enthusiasts have journeyed to remote places on Earth for insights into what exploration of the Red Planet would be like.
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Photo: Nadav Neuhaus/WPN

TOOLS OF THE TRADE: A Mars Society crew conducts field studies in the Utah desert in their space suits to determine what tools they will need for their mission. “The most important step in any engineering process is not deciding how to design something,” says Mars Society president Robert Zubrin. “It’s making sure you’re designing the right thing.”
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Photo: Nadav Neuhaus/WPN

ISOLATION DRILLS: The Mars Society has sent more than 500 volunteers to its stations in the Utah desert and the Canadian Arctic Islands. During these missions, the crews can connect with the outside world only via satellite-linked e-mail, which simulates the 8- to 40-minute round-trip communication delay between Earth and Mars.
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Photo: Haughton-Mars Project

MARTIAN BASE CAMP: The Mars Society is not the only group conducting Mars simulation studies. The Mars Institute and SETI Institute built the Haughton-Mars Project (HMP) Research Station on Devon Island, a remote and inhospitable outpost in the Canadian Arctic Islands.
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Photo: Haughton-Mars Project

SPACE GARDENING: HMP crews conduct geology and technological studies once a year on Devon Island. Their research center includes a greenhouse where scientists work to develop techniques for growing plants on Mars or the moon, which could provide astronauts with food and oxygen for extended stays.
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Photo: Haughton-Mars Project

SURGERY AT A DISTANCE: Doctors from the University of Ottawa and the Canadian Space Agency perform a mock appendectomy, guided by doctors in Houston and Detroit on a teleconference. The mock operation is part of the HMP research on telemedicine, which could one day support emergency care for crew members on long journeys.
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Photo: Haughton-Mars Project

GETTING AROUND: Researchers are also testing prototypes of rovers that humans could one day drive on Mars’s surface. The Mars Institute just completed a 500-kilometer Artic trek In a pressurized Humvee [above]. The Mars Society uses only small, unpressurized vehicles: “On Mars, there’s no AAA,” says Zubrin. “If you can’t lift it, don’t bring it.”
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Photo: Mars Simulation Laboratory/University Of Aarhus, Denmark

WEATHERPROOFING: Researchers at the Mars Simulation Laboratory, in Denmark, mimic Martian temperature, gas pressure, and composition inside laboratory devices such as this wind tunnel to test how different instruments would perform on Mars. The scientists also hope to answer the ever-nagging question of whether there was ever life on Mars.
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Photo: Mikhail Metzel/AP Photo

CLOSE QUARTERS: Before humans can explore Mars, they must endure a multimonth space journey. In March, six European researchers entered a 116-square-meter set of modules in Moscow for 105 days of windowless isolation. This is the latest in a series of studies conducted by the Russian space agency to simulate the physical and psychological stress of space travel.
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Photo: Mikhail Metzel/AP Photo

BIG BROTHER, MARTIAN EDITION: Later this year, as part of “The Mars 500” study, the agency plans to monitor the same crew for a total of 520 days, the expected length of a return mission to Mars—that is, unless there’s a repeat of the 1999 study in which a female crew member complained of unwanted sexual advances and two male crew members got into a bloody fight.
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astronauts mars manned spaceflight type:slideshow space flight

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