It has been a full month since Kelly Haston moved to Mars.
As commander of NASA’s first CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) mission, Haston and her three crewmates volunteered to live for greater than a 12 months secluded inside “Mars Dune Alpha,” a 1,700-square-foot (158 square meters) Mars base-like habitat that’s positioned not on the Red Planet, but fairly on the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
As Haston and her crew — flight engineer Ross Brockwell, medical officer Nathan Jones and science officer Anca Selariu — simulate life on Mars, a team of scientists “back on Earth” are monitoring the crew’s ability to finish tasks and work through the varieties of stresses astronauts might encounter to raised prepare for sending astronauts to Mars in the long run.
To maintain conditions as near real as possible, communications with the CHAPEA crew are on limited to the identical transit times it might take a signal to pass between Earth and Mars. As such, video or phone interviews are usually not possible. With the assistance of CHAPEA mission control, though, collectSPACE.com was capable of interview Haston via email to learn what life inside Mars Dune Alpha has been like during her first 30 days.
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collectSPACE (cS): Pondering back to June 25 and your first day within the habitat, are you able to recount your first 24 hours inside?
Kelly Haston: We were so glad upon ingress to the habitat that as soon as we got through the door and it closed, we formed a spontaneous group hug and set free a giant cheer. It made the gang watching the ingress laugh, after which we heard them cheer for us. It was very a special moment.
That first night we hung out unpacking our gear and organising our bedrooms, then we had a celebratory hot chocolate.
The subsequent day we had a full day of tasks arrange for us. Our activities are tracked using an interactive app that provided prompts and document links to the things we’re scheduled to do. This each helps keep us on schedule and in addition lets mission control know that we’ve got accomplished tasks. When there are problems or changes to the schedule, we alert mission control of those within the mission log. Attributable to the time delay, we’ve got learned to be prepared ahead of time, as in case you work out something is improper, or missing, firstly of a task, it can take over half-hour for that to be communicated to mission control and for us to listen to back with an answer. This implies we are sometimes troubleshooting issues on our own while waiting for mission control to get back to us with additional information.
We even have specified exercise that we complete and document on days after we are usually not leaving the habitat to do work on the Martian surface. Moreover, we document all food and liquids we ingest. On our first day we did all of those things but additionally took the chance to inventory the items within the habitat, because it was essential for us to know where every little thing is, but additionally to be certain that the items we thought were sent with us were indeed present and report discrepancies to mission control.
cS: How long was it before the initial excitement of a brand new experience wore off — if, indeed, it has — and also you settled right into a routine?
Haston: I’m unsure that the initial excitement has fully worn off; we’re still often doing recent things each week and learning an awesome deal. Nonetheless, the team works rather well together, and we dropped into day by day schedule and work norms fairly quickly, so I believe we had a routine fairly quickly, and by the second week we felt fairly good in regards to the schedule and completing our day by day mission goals in an efficient manner.
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cS: What’s a typical day for you now? Are you able to give us a transient “day-in-the-life” of an analog Mars mission crew member?
Haston: A day within the life is a tough one; as mentioned previously, we’ve got a good little bit of variety. I’ll give an example from a day that we exit onto the Martian surface. We call these EVAs or extravehicular activities where we go, we go outside the habitat and walk around on “Mars” and perform different task that you just would expect are needed to maintain a Martian base running and sometimes utilize virtual reality, which is absolutely fun and really beautiful.
We start the day around 06:00 by weighing ourselves right after we rise up, because the scientists running the simulation wish to collect as much data as possible and in addition be certain we’re staying healthy. After getting cleaned up we’ve got breakfast and tag up, discussing the approaching day’s tasks and desires, and answering any outstanding queries from the day before. It is a likelihood to alter the schedule if needed or be certain all things are covered and that everybody knows their role for the day.
Then we do a fast pre-brief for the EVA, although often we’ve got discussed this the night before as well. Following the pre-brief, the team that’s performing the EVA exits the habitat and starts to maneuver through a series of airlocks and procedures that may eventually have them stepping onto Mars of their simulated spacesuits, with any tools required for the day’s goals.
The 2 crew left inside will trade off being the mission control giving directions to the EVA crew, in addition to getting their day by day exercise and another inside tasks accomplished. When troubleshooting is required, the within crew will often mix forces to make sure we move through the difficulty as quickly as possible to enable the EVA crew to finish their goals within the allotted time.
After they come back in there may be time to get cleaned up, since it is usually quite sweaty, exertions, and the suit and equipment are big and heavy, after which we do a de-brief where the crew discusses what went well and possible improvements or alternative approaches for next time. Sometimes we also do surveys or testing after EVAs which are a part of the info collection for the project.
We then do any additional tasks or maintenance the habitat requires, eat dinner, after which have personal time, in addition to a while to jot down in our journals. Typically, we’re lights out by ~22:00, to get enough rest to do all of it again the following day.
cS: What have you ever found to be the most important challenge thus far?
Haston: The largest challenge thus far is communication with our family members and family. The time delay and data restrictions mean that things can get held up unexpectedly, or be slower than expected, if a whole lot of different items are queued up at the identical time. We’ve got worked through several unexpected challenges on this regard, so it has been a steeper learning curve that I assumed we would want.
Happily, that’s the main challenge we’ve got faced thus far, and we hope it’s recuperating. The day by day challenge of being on Mars has thus far been very fun.
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cS: Are you keeping a calendar? Drawing hashmarks on the wall to count until your 378 days are complete? Or are you attempting to ignore the passage of time?
Haston: I might not say I’m keeping a calendar, but my partner in California really wanted us to count up, not down, so we mark the passage of time with what number of days have passed, not what number of we’ve got left. To date it has felt pretty good to approach it that way, but I feel like I mark the weeks greater than the times.
cS: How is the food? Are you limited to freeze-dried or thermostabilized meals, or do you may have access to any fresh food (i.e. from a garden)?
Haston: The food is definitely really good and is especially a combination of freeze-dried and MRE [Meals Ready to Eat]/thermostabilized. Nonetheless, once every week we get a special meal and that mixes it up a bit and offers us some special flavors so as to add variety to the usual items. Nonetheless, we do even have a whole lot of variety in our day by day food selections, greater than I expected.
We document every little thing we eat and drink, even shakes of salt or pepper, so each meal tends to have a whole lot of discussion over the merits of a given item, what values it gets you for calories or proteins or other needed nutrients. I do not think many favorites have popped out yet and immediately everyone seems to be getting an excellent mixture of things to eat.
cS: How is the crew dynamic? You had a late swap of crewmates. Did which have any effect in your ability to get along within the hab?
Haston: The crew dynamic has been really incredible from the beginning of my involvement on this project, even during evaluation periods. I used to be amazed by how natural and comfy I used to be with everyone and the way caring they were about wanting to get to know me and be a part of a team.
And that’s the wonderful thing about our crew. We entered training as a team, whether you were a backup or not; we never considered each member as different, and after we did have a late swap, it meant we were already used to functioning as a team, there was no awkwardness or must adapt to a brand new configuration. We were sad for our crew that may not be coming, but by way of crew function we’re doing great.
cS: On the International Space Station, NASA has found that arranging periodic contacts with the crew members’ favorite celebrities will help psychologically. Has NASA offered the identical to you and your crew? Have you ever had any interesting interactions to this point (even given the comms delay)?
Haston: We’ve got not had this suggested yet, even though it does sound like a fun idea. It might should be a video, so perhaps it has not been suggested attributable to the shortage of ability to be interactive, attributable to data limitations if you end up on “Mars.”
Despite that limitation I might love if we got surprises like this through the mission! It might even be helpful to listen to from the astronauts as well, perhaps greater than famous people, and I might guess the crew would love that best.
cS: What do you think that the most important difference between your experience and a crew actually on Mars can be by way of the experience living in a confined hab?
Haston: The primary obvious difference is that we are usually not actually experiencing lower gravity or differences in oxygen. This may not be possible to simulate but can be physiologically very different, and in addition make EVAs lots more dangerous if something goes improper.
The opposite primary difference can be that they’d be gone for for much longer, possibly over three years attributable to travel constraints, and in addition that the likelihood of return is clearly not quite as secure as during an analog. Knowing that we are going to egress in only a little bit over a 12 months and that we are going to definitely egress from this mission is lots less stressful than someone actually traveling to and living on Mars.
cS: Do you may have access to tape-delayed TV or news programming? Any likelihood your crew is watching “Stars on Mars” and in that case, what you do consider the “celebronauts” experience in comparison with your individual to this point?
Haston: The crew got to bring a specific amount of non-public data with us, and we did an excellent job of collaborating on the content, so we’ve got a whole lot of movies and shows to look at, but currently we prefer to make use of our limited data bandwidth to concentrate on communicating along with your family and friends, fairly than ask for any recent items.
A few of my friends have told me about this show, but I even have not yet seen it. Nonetheless, I do love [former NFL football player and “Stars on Mars” celebronaut] Marshawn Lynch, so I hope he’ll win it (please don’t tell me if he’s already off the show!).
It is difficult to say how our experiences are different having not seen it, but we predict lots in regards to the data we’re helping to provide, and learn how to do the most effective job producing it, but not about entertaining people, although I’m sure among the things that we’re doing or will occur to us will likely be pretty funny in the long term.