Out of ‘Mars’ dome... to a buffet of fresh fruit

SIX PEOPLE including a British man helped themselves to a fresh fruit buffet after spending eight months confined in a dome simulating a mission to Mars.

The group were kept in isolation on a remote Hawaiian volcano to test how humans would react to living in confined conditions for an extended period of time. Samuel Payler, a doctoral candidate at the UK Centre for Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh, and five other researchers entered the HI-SEAS (Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation) habitat on Mauna Loa in January.

The experiment intended to help Nasa determine the requirements for sending astronauts on long missions, including trips to Mars. They emerged to cheers before devouring fresh fruit and vegetables, having eaten mainly freeze-dried food since the start of the year.

Mr Payler said: “We need to send humans out because it’s important for the future of the species. I think it’s actually really important to get off Earth. If you look back at the geological record, it is just full of mass extinctions.”

He was the only Briton among the four men and two women who made the dome their home. His co-residents were Ansley Barnard, an engineer from Reno, Nevada, Laura Lark, a computer scientist who spent five years as a software engineer at Google, systems engineer Joshua Ehrlich, freelance researcher James Bevington and Brian Ramos, who has a master’s degree in international space studies.