Convinced NASA has been slow to begin work towards the human missions to Mars, The International Mars Society is taking matters into its own hands. With $400,000 of privately raised funding, the society is building an experimental Mars Habitation Module and shipping it to a remote island in the Canadian Arctic. The cylindrical module, which will house six “astronauts” will be used to test methods of conducting human exploration of Mars in a terrain not unlike the surface of the Red Planet.