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– You want to find your Matt Damon inside you and spend a year pretending that you are isolated on Mars? NASA has a job for you. To prepare for potentially sending astronauts to Mars, NASA on Friday began taking requests for four people to live for a year in Mars Dune Alpha. It is a 1,700 square foot Martian habitat, created by a 3D printer, and inside a building at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, the AP reports. Paid volunteers will work on a simulated Martian exploration mission with spacewalks, limited home communications, food restrictions, resources, and equipment failures. NASA is planning three such experiments, the first starting in the fall of next year. The meals will all be meals prepared in the space, and no windows are provided. Some plants will be grown, but not the potatoes as in the movie The Martian, in which Damon played a stranded astronaut who survived on potatoes.
“We are looking at realistic situations on Mars,” said lead scientist Grace Douglas, to see how humans behave there. NASA isn’t looking for just anyone. Requirements include a master’s degree in a field of science, engineering or mathematics, or experience as a pilot. Applicants should be between the ages of 30 and 55, in good physical health, free from dietary issues, and not prone to motion sickness. This shows that NASA is looking for people close to the astronauts, said former Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. That’s a good thing, he said, because it’s a better experience if the attendees are more like the people who will actually go to Mars. Past Russian efforts for a simulated mission to Mars called Mars 500 did not end well in part because the participants looked too much like ordinary people, he said. There could be “incredible freedom,” Hadfield said, in “a year away from the demands of your normal life.”
(Read more stories from NASA.)
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