The Mars Society is looking for a few good men – and women – to spend four months holed up in an artificial igloo or tromping around the Canadian Arctic in bulky faux spacesuits. This won’t be an extended vacation, or a reality-TV plotline. For rocket scientist Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society, next year’s exercise on Devon Island will be an experiment in the exploration process – a test that could help smooth the path to Mars. It’s been a couple of months since Zubrin first announced the plans for a four-month simulated Mars mission on Devon Island in Canada’s Nunavut territory, just 900 miles (1,440 kilometers) from the North Pole. Now he and other mission planners are ready to sign up a volunteer crew of seven who will operate from the Mars Society’s Arctic habitat from May to September next year.
Four Months On A Mock Mars
Being cooped up on a space mission can do funny things to you – even if it’s a make-believe mission. During an extended simulation of a voyage to Mars back in 1999, a bloody fistfight reportedly broke out between two ersatz astronauts, and one woman participant complained of sexual harassment. So it’ll be interesting to see what happens next year, when the Mars Society is due to stage a simulated four-month mission – not within the comfy confines of a laboratory, but amid the frozen wastes of the Canadian Arctic. The society’s president, Robert Zubrin, confirmed last week’s reports that his organization was forgoing its annual simulated mission on Devon Island this year, and concentrating instead on next year’s Arctic expedition. “Essentially we’re saving the money from this year so we can do something bigger next year,” Zubrin said.
Outspoken scientist makes case for Mars The Daily Press
Robert Zubrin uses his vision of the past to extol his vision for the future, but he never allows himself to go off on a tangent. He has the ability to provoke laughter, but also to incite outrage in his single-minded approach to Mars exploration: that it trumps other purposes of the U.S. space program.
Dispatches from the Utah desert National Science Center of Greensboro
Dennis Hands, a science program presenter at the Natural Science Center, was selected by the Mars Society to participate in its Mars Desert Research Station extended simulation in southern Utah.
Mars project puts greenhouse on Devon Island Nunatsiaq News
Nunavut’s own wannabe Mars explorers are back on Devon Island, poking around the Haughton Crater in space suits and souped-up ATVs. And if you want to see why gardening in Nunavut is like gardening on Mars, you won’t want to miss descriptions and photos of the greenhouses they’re building on Devon Island. The first greenhouse, already up and running, is the pet project of a group of Mars enthusiasts and scientists with the Haughton-Mars Project, a yearly field camp that receives support from NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, the Mars Institute and the SETI Institute.
Looking for life on Mars – in the Outback IOL
Australian scientists are planning to build a “space station” in the remote Outback to simulate the conditions that future human explorers could face on Mars. Mars Society Australia says the station will be the final step in a worldwide experiment which has seen similar projects set up in the Canadian Arctic, the Utah desert and Iceland.
All-Female Team Explores Mars on Earth Discovery News
The first person on Mars might be a grandmother. That’s one unexpected possibility discovered by an all-female, six-member international crew that has just returned from Mars, or a reasonable facsimile of it, in the desert of southern Utah. The all-female Mona Lisa Project is the second half of an all-male, then all-female crew experiment by the Mars Society in the remote Mars Desert Research Station to see how different groups perform under conditions resembling those of the Red Planet.
MDRS Log Book
Psycho-Sociological Study on Group Dynamics was the main objective of the Mona Lisa – Leonardo project. Each crewmember took a personality test before the rotation; then during the isolation period at MDRS, the crewmembers had to take a set of three measurements:
Salivary samples to measure physiological stress;
Cognitive performance evaluation using the CogHealth software;
Online survey on group functioning, perceived stress and coping strategies. These measurements were taken three times during the mission: on Day 1, Day 6 and Day 12. The results of the Mona Lisa crew will be compared to the ones of the Leonardo crew, and the results will be published in a paper at the IAF congress in October 2005.
All-Female International Crew Begins Work at Mars Desert Research Station
Yesterday, Crew 40, the Mona Lisa Project, got underway at the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) near Hanksville, UT. The Mona Lisa Project is the second half of a study to observe the effects of having an all-female crew in a Mars analogue environment. The first half of the study was the just completed Leonardo Project that had an all-male crew establish a baseline. The idea of sending an all-female crew of six to one of these analogue habitats was born in August 2004 at the Summer Session of the International Space University (ISU). The main research topic of this project is to assess group dynamics in an international all-female/all-male crew in a Mars simulation.
MDRS Log Book
We started the day with a big clean up… Reorganization like only girls can do! We also fixed the generator and one of the space suits… After having organised the Hab and completed the clean up, we are ready for two extravehicular activities (EVA): Anne and Natalie did the emergency evacuation experiment from elementary students. You should have seen them running in the space suits… fantastic!