Sign Up for a Mission to 'Mars'

By Robert Lemos
02:00 AM Sep, 08, 2006

Next summer, six scientists will get to travel to the desolate permafrost desert of the Arctic, live in a two-level metal can and only go outside wearing 40 pounds of faux spacesuit.

Not your idea of fun? For the scientists, it could be. The team will be the first to get a taste of what it will be like to live on Mars for months at a time, and they get to skip the half-year trip to the red planet to boot.

The mission -- billed as "Hard work, no pay, eternal glory" -- will play out from May 1 to Aug. 30 at the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station, or FMARS, on Devon Island, a barren and frozen wasteland in the Canadian far north, about 900 miles from the North Pole.

The research station is run by the Mars Society, a group of scientists, engineers and futurists intent on accumulating the knowledge needed for manned exploration of Mars. The goal of the four-month tour is to develop field research techniques applicable for scientific investigations of the planet, said Robert Zubrin, an aeronautical engineer and president of the society.

"You put people in a field environment, task them to do what they would have to do on Mars, and see how well it works," Zubrin said. "And you can learn a lot, even though it is not the real thing."

Plunked in the middle of the most Mars-like spot on Earth, the station is surrounded by polar desert near the 23 million-year-old Haughton crater. The temperature during the summer varies between 30 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit and the terrain is bare of most vegetation.

The six researchers will spend four months roaming the barren landscape in a simulated space suit, returning home at the end of each day to a two-story, 8-meter-diameter living and work space modeled on the structure NASA recommends for Martian housing.

"Compared to other environments on Earth, Devon Island is one step closer to Mars," said Pascal Lee, planetary scientist at the SETI Institute and chairman of the Mars Institute. "It is colder than most of the Earth, drier than most of the Earth, and has less vegetation than most of the Earth."

Lee worked with the Mars Society on the FMARS project in the past, but now takes part in another research project on the island, known as the Haughton-Mars Project. The two projects -- HMP and FMARS -- sometimes do complementary investigations, but the relationship between the two groups of researchers has occasionally been stormy. Lee, for example, sees value in the Mars Society endeavor, but as a public outreach program, not necessarily as rigorous scientific study.

The Mars Society defends the scientific value of FMARS. For example, previous missions have revealed problems working with spacesuits that might not have been found otherwise, and have shown that station maintenance requires a hefty portion of time. Among other things, the upcoming summer mission will test the psychological effects of a long-term stay in the habitat -- previous stays have mostly been limited to two weeks, occasionally a month.

Unlike other isolation studies, boredom generally is not an issue at FMARS. In previous missions, Zubrin, who has also written several books that support the manned exploration of the red planet, had to impose curfews to stop people from working themselves too hard and accumulating too much stress.

"Yes, the psychological edges of people will get on your nerves more in a four-month mission," Zubrin said. "But it is also pacing. You can withstand 15-hour days for a month, but not for four months."

The mission will also focus on discovering some particulars of living on Mars, for example, how much water a person uses under such circumstances. Even recycling 90 percent of the fluids used by Mars-bound astronauts, water will still account for more mass than the spacecraft itself, Zubrin said. Limiting researchers to a sponge bath every other day, the Mars Society has found that the average person will use a total of 16 kilograms of water per day in the close confines of the habitat.

"You can only get this number in this way," Zubrin said. "You could not get it in an isolation experiment because they are not working. And you could not get it in a tent camp, because people aren't smelling each other."

Being in close proximity to other researchers also leads to interesting solutions to the problems that could be encountered living on Mars, said William Clancey, chief scientist of human-centered computing at the NASA Ames Research Center and a past participant at both the FMARS and the Mars Society's Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in Utah.

"I think that one of the biggest accomplishments and advantages coming out of the Mars Society's habitats is bringing people together and varying these simulations," Clancey said. "Doing real geology for example. This is where I have learned what geological exploration on another planet looks like. I have created tools, and they have used my tools, and we have improved them incrementally over the years."

As the United States and other countries embark on a plan to get to Mars by 2030, proponents also hope projects like the Mars Society habitats will generate excitement over reaching the red planet, said Vincent Sabathier, senior fellow and director of space initiatives at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington D.C. think tank.

"Right now, we are not ready to go to Mars," Sabathier said. "We don't have the science, we don't have the money and we don't have the political environment for going to Mars. So having people continuously push to go there is a valuable thing."

Applications to take part in the four-month stint on the FMARS are due by the end of September. In addition to scientists, the project is seeking a handyman who will live "out of sim," taking care of maintenance, defending scientists from the occasional polar bear and generally striving to keep the other six ensconced in the illusion of extraterrestrial living.

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