Analogs part of ‘exploration toolkit’

DHOFAR DESERT, Oman — Two scientists in spacesuits, stark white against the auburn terrain of desolate plains and dunes, test a geo-radar built to map Mars by dragging the flat box across the rocky sand.

When the geo-radar stops working, the two walk back to their all-terrain vehicles and radio colleagues at their nearby base camp for guidance. They can’t turn to their mission command, far off in the Alps, because communications from there are delayed 10 minutes. But this isn’t the red planet — it’s the Arabian Peninsula.

The desolate desert in southern Oman, near the borders of Yemen and Saudi Arabia, resembles Mars so much that more than 200 scientists from 25 nations chose it as their location for the next four weeks, to field-test technology for a manned mission to Mars.

Public and private ventures are racing toward Mars — both former President Barack Obama and SpaceX founder Elon Musk declared humans would walk on the red planet in a few decades.

New challengers like China are joining the United States and Russia in space with an ambitious, if vague, Mars program. Aerospace corporations like Blue Origin have published schematics of future bases, ships and suits.

The successful launch of SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket this week “puts us in a completely different realm of what we can put into deep space, what we can send to Mars,” said analog astronaut Kartik Kumar.

The next step to Mars, he says, is to tackle non-engineering problems like medical emergency responses and isolation.

“These are things I think can’t be underestimated.” Kumar said.

While cosmonauts and astronauts are learning valuable spacefaring skills on the International Space Station — and the U.S. is using virtual reality to train scientists — the majority of work to prepare for interplanetary expeditions is being done on Earth.

And where best to field-test equipment and people for the journey to Mars but on some of the planet’s most forbidding spots?

Seen from space, the Dhofar Desert is a flat, brown expanse. Few animals or plants survive in the desert expanses of the Arabian Peninsula, where temperatures can top 125 degrees Fahrenheit, or 51 degrees Celsius.

On the eastern edge of a seemingly endless dune is the Oman Mars Base: a giant 2.4-ton inflated habitat surrounded by shipping containers turned into labs and crew quarters.