The parts are a dozen 800-pound (360-kilogram) fiberglass panels that were successfully airdropped last week to the rocky Devon Island in Canada's northernmost province. They will become the walls and roof of the Mars Arctic Research Station -- a combination bunkhouse, laboratory and home base for the kind of scientific work that astronauts may someday do on Mars.

Panels for the Mars Arctic Research Station await assembly at Devon Island.

The station, a cylindrical dome-topped module, is the work of the nonprofit Mars Society, a group dedicated to raising public support for human exploration of the Red Planet. It was developed in close consultation with aerospace engineers and space-mission planners to ensure that the module would be a realistic prototype of a shelter that might be used on Mars, said Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society.

The panels arrived in three cargo shipments dropped by parachute from a U.S. military C 130 aircraft. The deliveries carried materials and supplies for the Mars Society's program, and for NASA's Haughton-Mars Project, which is being conducted simultaneously at Haughton Crater on Devon Island.

The NASA-sponsored project brings a diverse group of scientists to practice how astronauts might conduct planetary missions in harsh and hostile environments.

While the large panels arrived safely, two of the supply loads fell slightly off target, Zubrin said. The cargo is only a few hundred yards (meters) away from the site where the habitat module will be assembled, but retrieving the panels and hauling them over a boulder-strewn, roadless terrain presents formidable challenges.

Seven feet (2 meters) wide and 20 feet (6 meters) tall, the side panels weigh about 800 pounds each, Zubrin said.

The 8-member assembly crew on site at Devon Island will probably wait for the final cargo drops -- scheduled to occur on Saturday, July 8 -- before trying to retrieve the distant panels.

Besides delivering the 800-pound (360-kilogram) steel legs that will carry the weight of the module, and the floor panels for the two-story structure, Saturday's cargo drop was slated to deliver a disassembled trailer that the team can use to haul the panels.

Once assembled, the entire structure will weigh about 20,000 pounds (9,070 kilograms). That is actually lighter than the estimated weight for a habitation module NASA plans to launch for a future piloted mission to Mars, Zubrin said.

"It's heavy in [that] people have to manhandle and haul [it] around on Devon Island, but in terms of what people have estimated this kind of a thing to be, it's very lightweight."

The module was built using more than $400,000 raised from private donations and sponsorship deals. The Mars Society hired an architect and a construction firm to design and build a structure where fledgling ideas on how to design and manage a Mars mission could be developed and tested.

Once assembled, the module will be the brief home to a six-member crew that will live and work as if it were actually on Mars conducting an exploratory mission.

The assembly team needs 14 days of clear weather to assemble the structure, Zubrin said. If the skies cooperate, and if Saturday's parachute drop is on target, the module will be ready for habitation by the end of July.