- No one ever said space was graceful.
- [Kim] No, it really isn't.
Okay, you're almost there. - Okay.
A human mission to Mars won't be quick.
A full trip to the red planet could potentially
last up to two and a half years.
That means Martian crew members will be
spending a lot of time together isolated from Earth.
So NASA wants to know what kind of traits
a person will need to be an ideal Mars astronaut.
The best way to figure that out?
Send people to Mars before you send people to Mars.
It's taken us about an hour to get to the meeting place
where we're meeting the people from Hi-Seas
and then it's gonna take us another hour
to get to the Hi-Seas habitat.
Our ears are definitely popping as we get
higher and higher.
We're on our way to Hi-Seas, an analog Mars
habitat run by the University of Hawaii
and funded by NASA.
It's located on the state's Big Island and getting there
does feel a bit like traveling to Mars.
There are plenty of remote locations on Earth,
so why pick Hawaii?
Well, it has to do with the terrain.
Not the beaches or green valleys though.
Hi-Seas is located on the side of an active
volcano Mauna Loa.
What's great about the geology out here
is it's actually pretty similar to what we might
find on Mars, thanks to past volcanic activity
on the planet.
- This area, we're about 7,000 on Mauna Loa right now,
is very, very similar to the surface of a young Mars.
Since Mars hasn't had much in the way of erosion
over the years, it's not all that different
from the surface of current Mars.
- What are some of the things that you specifically
testing for, the data that you're collecting
and how are you giving that to NASA and translating
that for them?
- One of the focuses, what NASA is funding us
to do here is to really look at crew dynamics.
So how do you pick a crew, how do you pick individuals,
how do you put them together into a crew
so that they'll work really well over these long
duration missions because as I'm sure you've seen
maybe on a camping trip, there's some groups
that work really well over a long weekend
but maybe wouldn't want to spend two and half
years with--
- Not even just a camping trip.
Just on a weekend in my apartment.
But I digress.
(soft music)
- [Kim] So welcome to the habitat.
- Home sweet home. - Yeah.
So this area is the reconfigurable area
so they can move things around here.
It's where they do most of their work.
It's where they exercise.
It's where they socialize, really a lot of stuff
happens in this area.
- [Loren] A typical day in the habitat consists of
analyzing samples, writing reports, field work.
What Mars astronauts would probably do.
Each person has their own bedroom,
though it's not very big.
There's also cooking with mostly non-perishable items
and just general free time to fill like reading books
or watching movies.
It didn't look like a very glamorous life, though
so I decided to ask someone who'd lived it.
Meet Annie Meier.
She's a research test engineer at NASA
who spent four months at Hi-Seas back in 2014.
- The crew was an international crew
from all over the world.
We were from all different upbringings and we all
met fundamental credentials to be on the mission
but I would say just like any family that's locked up
in the house too long, you have some disagreements
or different approaches of how you solve a problem.
So if things ever did become an issue,
we were pretty good about trying to immediately
extinguish an issue right away in talking about it
because you can't just walk out the front door
and go for a walk.
It's like you're stuck here-- - It would be
bad for you. - Yeah.
So we could only take showers.
We had about 10 minutes of shower water per crew member
per week and we were working out.
- I'm sorry, per week? - Yeah.
So we were working out every day, simulating reduced
gravity so a couple hours of sweating and working out
or if you put on that big spacesuit and you got
all sweaty, you can't take a very long shower.
So I definitely missed modern plumbing
but you made it work.
- [Loren] Speaking of modern plumbing, the toilets also
don't have any.
- Have you seen the movie, The Martian?
- I have.
- [Kim] You might remember them growing potatoes
in compost was a fairly central part--
- [Loren] I do recall, yes.
- Well our crews too have composting toilets
and the microbial community that lives
in the toilet turns your deposit
into nice, clean compost.
- Well, that's lovely.
So you're kind of living with it for a while.
- You are and you're highly motivated to keep
that microbial community happy and healthy.
- [Loren] Making matters worse, all electronic communication
in and out of the habitat is delayed by 20 minutes each way.
That's roughly how long it would take for a radio
signal to travel the distance from Mars to Earth.
Though timing will vary depending on the planets' orbits.
So getting a reply from someone on Earth could take
up to 40 minutes.
- Yeah, it was stressful.
If things were going bad back home and you got
an email, you can't do anything about it.
Everyone had their own personal lives
continuing without them.
Friends were celebrating milestones
and you're here doing this simulated Mars mission.
- If you want to go for a stroll, the only way
to go outside the habitat is to suit up
just like you would have to on Mars.
The thing is Martian astronauts won't be
spending that much time roaming around the surface.
Mars' atmosphere is much thinner than Earth's
so it provides little protection from deep space
radiation either from incoming solar flares
or cosmic rays stemming from outside the galaxy.
So rather than leave the habitat all the time
to get new samples, astronauts are gonna want
to send out recon missions first to study the landscape.
The best way to do that?
A radiation hardened rover.
We've got just the thing.
- You want to minimize the amount of time
that humans spend outside a protected habitat.
So what you do is, you send the rover out
to scout the locations, see what's around.
If you have a special area that you're interested in,
send the rover, take images, take soil samples.
Bring it back and then once you've identified
which are the key locations, you will send humans
there to follow up.
Then, they're not gonna be wasting time trying
to find a location.
It's already pre-identified by the rover.
- [Loren] I had some fun cruising with the rover outside
but in reality, astronauts aren't going to be
anywhere near the vehicle when they operate it.
- It doesn't work.
- We got ET. - Do five more degrees.
- Okay.
- [Rodrigo] Those elusive Martians.
(Loren laughs)
- [Loren] It's a tedious process operating the rover
from the control center.
It involved typing in commands to inch the rover
forward or tilt the cameras ever so slightly to get that
perfect picture of a rock.
I'm getting the hang of this.
- [Rodrigo] Good, that sounds like it.
You are passing your driver's test.
- It's like being 16 all over again.
One thing I'm learning here is that you really
need a lot of patience to accomplish any task on Mars.
- Yes, everything is done very slowly.
There are certain time delays involved.
The instrumentation you're carrying onboard
is delicate, it's expensive.
So yeah, you don't want to rush things.
- Right.
- Like I say, even though Helalani moves really slow,
it's 10 times faster that Curiosity.
- [Loren] It just goes to show that Martian astronauts
will be spending a lot of time inside,
cooped up with not much room to roam around
and with the same people around you at all times.
It's not going to be like a vacation.
It's going to be an extreme environment
that most can't handle but that's why Hi-Seas exists.
So that NASA can figure out what it will be like
and to find the people who can handle it.
(soft music)
(darts thunk)
(Loren giggles)
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