Mars: Why Four Scientists Were Trapped in a Replica of the Red Planet for a Year

Just half a century ago, flights to Mars were the stuff of science fiction.

Today, scientists are seriously considering what skills future colonizers of the Red Planet will need, how they will survive the long journey there, and how they will be prepared to face hostile and uninhabitable conditions.

It takes a special kind of person to live in space. How will astronauts cope?

To answer these questions, on June 25 last year, four American pioneers – Kelly Huston, Ross Brockwell, Nathan Jones and Anca Celariu – undertook a “space journey.”

Not Mars, of course, but a 3D-printed replica of a Martian surface habitat. In simple terms: a structure built to house astronauts and their equipment on Mars.

The structure is located at a training facility at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, where scientists have attempted to replicate as closely as possible the conditions that future colonists might live in.

The year-long “confinement” of the selected four people was the longest and most comprehensive spaceflight simulation experiment ever conducted.

Over the past year, scientists have been monitoring the mission participants remotely, periodically giving them tasks and constantly collecting data on their physical and mental health.

The “flight” officially ended on Saturday, July 6. Researchers hope to find out how people survive together for so long, without conflict, without their loved ones, and without their mental health deteriorating.

The four people who took part in the experiment last saw the sky more than a year ago.

For nearly 370 days, they lived in complete isolation as part of the CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) program.

There was no shortage of candidates: more than 10,000 applications were submitted for the four “Mars volunteer” positions advertised by NASA.

The overall goal of the mission is to study the physiological and psychological effects of long-term space travel (the shortest flight to Mars would take nine months one way) and near-total social isolation on humans.

The Mars module, which imitates the surface of the Red Planet, has an area of ​​almost 160 square meters and was built using a 3D printer.

Scientists believe that 3D printing could be a possible way to build homes on Mars. Since the planet is millions of miles away, transporting building materials there is impractical.

Colonizers will have to make do with materials that already exist on Mars: dust and sand.

There is hope that they can form the basis of material for 3D-printed space modules.

It’s impossible to fully replicate the hostile conditions of Mars on Earth, says Suzanne Bell, director of NASA’s Behavioral Health and Performance Laboratory at Johnson Space Center.

After all, Mars has an atmosphere that is unsuitable for breathing, microgravity and strong radiation.

But CHAPEA is doing its best to prepare future colonists for the many challenges that a crew will inevitably face on a real mission to Mars.

For a year, the participants ate only foods that could survive a long space flight (such as canned food), as well as foods they grew themselves in a specially designed “Martian greenhouse.”

One of the main problems that a real crew might face (which was reproduced in this experiment) is the huge communication delay due to the distance between Mars and Earth.

If people on Mars wanted to contact mission control, any signal from Earth would take 22 minutes to reach the surface of Mars.

The reverse transfer takes the same time, i.e. almost 45 minutes to get an answer to a question.

This means that if difficulties arise, the crew cannot count on help from Earth and must solve the problem on their own.

The organizers designed the experiment to include unexpected difficulties and unpleasant situations, from intermittent audio communications to sudden failures of small equipment.

According to Suzanne Bell, this is necessary to test how crew members will react to stress in conditions of complete isolation.

To participate, volunteers had to have at least a master’s degree in science and have experience flying aircraft or undergoing military training.

Kelly Huston, who became the mission commander, is a medical doctor who specializes in developing stem cell treatments for diseases.

Brockwell is a design engineer, Jones is a military doctor who worked in the emergency medical service, and Celariu is a microbiologist with experience in the U.S. Navy.

To ensure the crew was suitable for the program, they had to undergo the same physical and psychological tests as professional astronauts.

Advocates for manned missions to Mars believe that data from CHAPEA will help develop new technologies and astronaut training methods, and help make long-term space travel safe and efficient.

However, many critics consider this approach too optimistic. They question the need for manned flights to Mars, considering them too risky and expensive.

After all, the vast majority of tasks that will be assigned to future colonizers can also be performed by robots, and at much lower cost and without any risk to human life.

And this risk is, to put it mildly, high. As the scientific director of the Space Research Institute, Vice President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Lev Zeleny notes, the CHAPEA program does not answer the question of how to safely deliver people to Mars.

Outside the Earth’s magnetic field, strong radiation could put astronauts traveling to Mars at risk.

Zeleny claims that technical solutions to protect astronauts from harmful rays have not yet been invented and therefore is skeptical about “Martian preparation.”

“Let them exercise… Brush their teeth, do exercises… It won’t hurt them anyway,” he says.

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