‘Mars’ crew set to return to Earth
After a year of living like astronauts marooned on Mars, six pasty-faced scientists are preparing for their first encounter in a year with direct sunlight and the company of other earthlings.
During the last northern summer, the three men and three women moved into a white dome on a volcano on Hawaii, some 2400 metres above sea level, where the arid rock and bare lava-strewn terrain mimics the surface of the red planet.
They were not allowed to leave the dome except in a space suit: like the protagonists of last year’s film The Martian, they would venture out to explore and collect soil samples.
The rest of their year was spent inside the dome, which was called the Hi-seas Habitat, growing peas and kale, working out in a communal exercise space and sleeping in narrow bedrooms in the roof.
Communications with the outside world were subject to a 20-minute delay, as they would be if the scientists were on Mars.
Sheyna Gifford, the mission medical officer and online diarist, described a dinner-time, featuring a lengthy debate about soil.
‘‘Someone would say, ‘That’s not soil, that’s bedrock’. Someone else will say, ‘Is the sea floor soil? It provides nutrients for ocean life’. ‘That’s sediment, not a soil per se,’ a third person will add. ‘Soils are a subset of sediment.’ ’’
The scientists conducted experiments, and were themselves part of an experiment to see how people in a communal space with even fewer resources than the Big Brother house would manage to live and work together, as astronauts would have to on Mars.
The project, funded by Nasa and run by the University of Hawaii, is the fourth such mission. ‘‘They’re doing OK as far as we can tell,’’ Kim Binsted, one of the research team monitoring the mission, said. ‘‘They are clamouring to get into the ocean. I think they will enjoy having a beer as well.’’
Next week the six volunteers will step out of the hatch, without spacesuits, to feel the breeze on their faces and the accompanying shock of a throng of journalists. In her blog, Gifford said she now thinks of an orange as an object that ‘‘exists only in two dimensions – images, references, distant memories’’.
The researchers are recruiting for further missions. English-speakers aged between 20 and 65, with a science or engineering degree and a willingness to undergo partial sensory deprivation and months dining on freeze-dried food while discussing soil are encouraged to apply.