Four humans to start ‘living on Mars’

A crew of four volunteers, who are a part of NASA’s Human Exploration Research Analog (Hera) mission, and will leave everything behind for 45 days to live on Mars.

The four volunteers include Jason Lee, Stephanie Navarro, Shareef Al Romaithi, and Piyumi Wijesekara. This summer, four people will live out their dream of being on a Mars-like planet, advancing the work of scientists and engineers towards the goal of sending humans to the red planet and establishing a habitable environment there.

The four volunteers are a part of the one-year project that is preparing people to explore the red planet. To survive, the people will live in a habitat designed to mimic the climate that they will experience when they eventually step foot on Mars. The simulated mission to Mars will be conducted within a habitat at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Their mission will start when they enter the habitat on May 10 and terminate when they return to Earth on June 24.

“Hera enables scientists to study how crew members adapt to isolation, confinement, and remote conditions before NASA sends astronauts on deep space missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond,” NASA said in a statement.

The 3D-printed habitat will have two restrooms, a technical work area, a kitchen, private crew quarters, and spaces for work, exercise, entertainment, and medicinal purposes in addition to places for crop development activities. June of this year will mark the crew’s move into their Martian residence while the teams gather the most precise data during the analogue trip.

“During the simulation, crew members will carry out different types of mission activities, including simulated spacewalks, robotic operations, habitat maintenance, personal hygiene, exercise, and crop growth,” said NASA in a statement.

In addition to a heavy workload, the volunteers will encounter environmental stresses including resource scarcity, isolation, and equipment malfunction in order to simulate every scenario that humans could encounter when they finally land on Mars.

“The major crew activities during the analogue may consist of simulated spacewalks including virtual reality, communications, crop growth, meal preparation and consumption, exercise, hygiene activities, maintenance work, personal time, science work, and sleep,” said NASA in its mission brief.

The crew’s 45-day mission will involve scientific research and operational duties during their simulated journey to the Red Planet, which will include a virtual reality “walk” over Mars’s surface. As they “near” Mars, they will also encounter longer communication lags with the Mission Control Centre, up to five minutes in each direction.

The volunteers’ time will be spent remotely controlling robotic components, which will be crucial for actual teams to increase their exploration capabilities on Mars. They will also be tasked with piloting a drone that resembles a helicopter and a roaming robot.

The American space agency is planning three such analogue expeditions to learn more about what it takes to live close door to our cosmic neighbour. Although the first mission is starting this year, the second mission will take place in 2025, and the third mission will take place in 2026.

“We’re really looking at how the crew performance and health changes based on realistic Mars restrictions and the lifestyle of the crew members. So, the lifestyle is what we’re trying to simulate by setting up a realistic environment and workload for the CHAPEA crew,” said Raina MacLeod, CHAPEA deputy project manager.

This team is the second to set foot on the Earth-based Martian simulation. On March 18, the last crew concluded their HERA mission. This year, there will be two more missions; the last HERA crew is scheduled to conclude on December 20.

Meet the volunteers

Jason Lee is a thermal fluids specialist who works as an associate professor at the University of Connecticut. He holds degrees from esteemed universities such as MIT and UC Berkeley. His studies focus on heat transfer and manufacturing.

Space operations officer and seasoned engineer Stephanie Navarro has held both civilian and military positions at Northrop Grumman. She is quite good at programmes involving satellite communication.

With more than 16 years of experience in aviation, Abu Dhabi’s innovative pilot Shareef Al Romaithi demonstrates unmatched skill. From Embry-Riddle to piloting Boeing aeroplanes, he underwent an incredible journey that ended in a ground-breaking PhD, making him the youngest person to accomplish this achievement.

NASA postdoctoral scientist Piyumi Wijesekara negotiates the complexity of space’s effects on human health. Her academic path developed her bioengineering knowledge by concentrating on respiratory physiology.

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