Eight months on ´Hawaiian Mars´ tests rigors of exploration

WASHINGTON: Six people have sealed themselves inside a white vinyl dome in Hawaii to embark on an eight-month test of how their mental health might fare during a mission to Mars.

The NASA-funded project, the longest US Mars simulation yet, involves three men and three women who have no access to fresh food and limited access to Internet that requires 20-minute intervals between click and response, as it might be in deep space.

They are allowed to venture outside their igloo-like enclosure -- which measures 36 feet (11 meters) in diameter and 20 feet (six meters) tall -- only if wearing a spacesuit.

"We are surrounded by basaltic lava and living in isolation on the slopes of Mauna Loa where there is little evidence of plant or animal life," wrote crew member Jocelyn Dunn, a doctoral candidate at Purdue University´s School of Industrial Engineering, after her first day in the dome on October 17.

"The training wheels are coming off as our new reality is setting in," Dunn wrote on her blog, http://fivestarview.blogspot.com, which she plans to update throughout the mission.

NASA is spending $1.2 million on a series of three such projects known as Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) to determine the potential pitfalls of sending people together to spend long periods in close quarters on a distant planet.