On the morning of Aug. 28, six people emerged from a 13,000-cubic-foot dome on a red volcano and took a celebratory breath of fresh air. The six astronauts comprising the fourth Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) “Mars Mission” had just completed the longest isolation simulation on Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, the largest subaerial volcano on Earth and the closest thing to Mars that exists on this planet.
You’d think the “return to Earth” would be jarring—it’d been a while since the astronauts had been outside without a 20-pound space suit or felt the cool brush of a foggy morning. But after spending a year testing the limits of humankind’s mental fortitude in an isolated, 36-foot-wide dome, not much fazes the crew.
“It wasn’t as drastic as I think it could have been,” Carmel Johnston, the 26-year-old Whitefish native who commanded the crew, said of their return. “It’s not really that difficult [to adjust].”
What has been surprising is the sudden celebrity status, Johnston said. Locals who had followed every step of the simulation have recognized them at nearby bars and restaurants. Over 75 members of the media were present on the remote volcano when the crew exited the dome, and after interacting with the same five people in very predictable ways for 365 days, Johnston said the attention feels weird.
But this is, after all, a historic accomplishment. A NASA behavioral research program, HI-SEAS aims to understand how social, interpersonal, and cognitive dynamics impact an astronaut crew’s performance over time. With a mission to the real red planet looming in the future, it’s imperative that NASA can assemble an effective team that won’t implode under the stress of long-duration isolation.
Three crews have already survived simulations on Mauna Loa, but for shorter periods of time—four or eight months. Johnston and crew were selected from a pool of “astronaut-like” candidates through a rigorous application process to be guinea pigs in the longest simulation HI-SEAS has ever conducted. Researchers are now beginning data analysis to form conclusions on the psychological factors of isolation and on how to find the perfect combination of crewmembers.
“They have to take all the data from the last couple years, aggregate it, then write a giant, giant report, and give the document to NASA and say, ‘This is how to make a crew [that could survive Mars]; this is what you have to consider,’” Johnston said. “[They’ll be able to say,] ‘You need to have one of this kind of person, and one of this kind, but not two of this kind; they’d butt heads.’ We all fall into some category. It’s super scientific. We are super complex—but also super simple.”
Johnston, a soil scientist with a Master of Science in Land Resources and Environmental Sciences from Montana State University, conducted tests of her own while on Mauna Loa. She experimented with different soil treatments, fertilizer, and light to gain insight into how difference species of edible plants might grow on Martian regolith.
“They grew, and they thrived,” she said.
She will return to Whitefish, where her parents live, later this September. Now that she has all of Earth at her fingertips, she’s not sure what will come next.
“I have options, but I don’t have a plan,” she said. “I’m interested in pursuing a Ph.D. I would like to go study how we can grow plants on Mars and lots of complexities about that. I would just love to live on a ranch forever and raise sheep and cows. I’d also love to travel the world.”
For those interested in HI-SEAS, NASA is currently recruiting for two future eight-month-long “Mars Missions.”