Nautilus

Stress on Simulated Mars Was Not What I Expected

Welcome to sMars: Christiane Heinicke stands on a hillside southwest of the dome. The solar array that powers the habitat is to her right. To her left are the backup hydrogen fuel cells and the solar water heater.Photograph by Christiane Heinicke/Sheyna Gifford, 2015

or 6 crewmembers who have supposedly traveled 150 million miles—and were, beforehand, complete strangers—we have remarkably little space. For more than 100 days we’ve been conducting NASA-sponsored studies at HI-SEAS—Hawai’i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation—8,000 feet above sea level, in a dome around the size of a 3-bedroom apartment without real-time communication, to help understand how humans can survive a journey to Mars and

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