DOME FREE AFTER 8 MONTHS

A SCIENTIST based in Scotland “returned to Earth” yesterday after living on a virtual Mars for eight months.

Samuel Payler, 28, was the first Brit to enter the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog & Simulation dome as part of studies which US space agency NASA hope will help them to send humans to the red planet by the 2030s.

The doctoral candidate at the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Astrobiology and five fellow researchers lived in isolation in the structure, which is just 36ft in diameter and 20ft tall, since January.

HI-SEAS is located 8500 feet above sea level on the barren slope of the Mauna Loa volcano, which was chosen as its terrain roughly resembles that of Mars.

To replicate what it would be like to live on the planet, the team of four men and two women were only allowed to go outside wearing spacesuits with limited oxygen.

When they finally emerged from the dome yesterday, Samuel’s fellow crew member Laura Lark said: “Long-term space travel is absolutely possible. There are certainly human factors to be figured out, but we are absolutely capable of it.”

The team’s daily routine involved preparing food, exercising, doing scientific research and tracking use of resources such as food, power and water.

To maintain the sense of isolation, canned and freeze-dried food and other supplies were dropped off some distance from the dome and had to be retrieved by a robot. All communication was delayed by 20 minutes – the time it takes for information to travel between Mars and Earth.

Whenever they got overwhelmed by being in such a confined space, crew members used virtual reality devices to escape to tropical beaches or other familiar landscapes.

The simulation was the fifth one carried out since HI-SEAS was established in 2012.