The atmosphere is thick with carbon dioxide. Dust devils made up of iron particles sweep across the planet, reducing it to an endless night. Outside, it can be as cold as minus 60C.
It is perhaps little wonder, then, that Nasa’s plans to simulate life on Mars do not for the moment involve much going outside. The agency’s 1,700 sq ft base, called Mars Dune Alpha, will involve a crew of four spending a year pretending they are on the red planet in the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, home of the Gemini and Apollo missions.
The $1.5 billion complex this week invited civilians to apply to join Nasa’s Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog — or Chapea — programme from next year. “Applicants should have a strong desire for unique, rewarding adventures and interest in contributing to Nasa’s work to prepare for the first human journey to Mars,” it said.
However, not all agree that this approach is the right one. The Mars Society, an organisation dedicated to the human exploration and settlement of Mars and which conducts rival simulations, points out that when we eventually go to Mars, we are likely to want to go outside.
Robert Zubrin, the society’s founder, pointed to their research stations in the Canadian high Arctic and Utah desert, both of which offer “interesting geological environments, similar to what one might find on Mars”.
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“Our simulations occur in a field environment … Nasa don’t do this, theirs are isolation experiments,” he said. “Doing Mars mission simulations without meaningful objectives is like trying to do target practice without a target.”
Their missions are shorter, ranging from two weeks to three months, but they have completed more than 300 involving about 1,800 people overall.
Each morning the crews gather in a small common area to eat a breakfast of dried food, bacteria cultures and greenhouse plants. The crew are allotted one 90-second shower per day each and must wear spacesuits if they venture outside.
On such outdoor expeditions they practice emergency scenarios such as deciding whether to let colleagues return to the station if they are contaminated by radiation.
The main concern for Zubrin is the human factor. “When you do a mission simulation that doesn’t give crew meaningful exploration to do, what you find is the chief human factors problem the crew faces is boredom,” he said.
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“On the other hand, a crew in a field environment, when crew are scientists and know they are there to explore, are extremely strongly motivated and the chief human factors problem we find is not boredom, it’s overwork. I led several crews in the Arctic and repeatedly had to order my crews to stop working.”
Nasa, however, says there is little chance of boredom. It pointed to “environmental stressors such as resource limitations, equipment failure, communication delays, and significant workloads”.
Volunteers must be made of the “right stuff”, holding a master’s degree in a Stem subject — science, technology, engineering or mathematics — with at least two years’ professional experience or at least a thousand aircraft piloting hours.
They must also be healthy US citizens or permanent residents, non-smokers, aged between 30 and 55 years and proficient in English.
Zubrin, however, said there were more important considerations. The best crews, he said, are “people who believe in the ideals of one humanity and united nations”.
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Applicants must apply to Nasa by April 2.
