Atop a volcano, a new eight-month long Mars simulation is underway.
For the first time ever, the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) project, which tests how humans would endure the isolation of a Mars mission, will include participants from four different countries of origin.
At 5 p.m. Hawaii local time on Thursday (Feb. 15), the four participants of the HI-SEAS Mission VI crew, who herald from Korea, Australia, Slovakia and Scotland, respectively, began their eight-month stay inside a dome habitat atop Mauna Loa on the island of Hawaii, according to a statement from University of Hawaii.
The mission's goal is to determine the long-duration requirements of a future crewed mission to Mars. HI-SEAS is a NASA-funded project, and is now in its sixth year.
"For humans to successfully undertake a long-duration spaceflight to Mars, it will require a global collaboration, and so it seems appropriate that our Mission VI begins with this spirit of internationalism," said Kim Binsted, HI-SEAS Principal Investigator, in the statement by the University of Hawaii, where HI-SEAS is based.
The four test participants will live in confined conditions, according to the statement. They will also be subjected to 20-minute communication delays to simulate what message delay would actually be like between Earth and Mars, and to test how this can affect feelings of isolation. They'll be expected to engage in daily habits such as exercising and preparing recipes from shelf-stable ingredients, in addition to research and field work.
The participants are Sukjin Han, assistant professor in Economics at the University of Texas at Austin; astrobiologist Michaela Musilova, who is also the chair of the Slovak Organisation for Space Activities; Lisa Stojanovski, a science communicator managing the Australian chapter of the Space Generation Advisory Council; and astrophysicist Calum Hervieu, a systems engineer from rural Scotland.
Follow Doris Elin Salazar on Twitter @salazar_elin. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
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