A team of six researchers returned from a yearlong sojourn “to Mars” in Hawai’i this Monday, concluding an experiment meant to study the long-term psychological challenges of a manned mission to Mars.

The six crew members were part of a program called HI-SEAS (Hawai’i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation), which places a team of scientists in a small, isolated living space 8,000 feet above sea level on the northern slope of Mauna Loa. These conditions are meant to simulate living on Mars.

“The people lived inside an enclosure that would be about the size of a Martian habitat, and every time they went outside they had to don space suits as though they were living on Mars,” astronomy and physics teacher Eric Nelson said. “They effectively simulated living on the Martian environment. And the things they did would be the same type of tasks they would be doing if they lived on Mars.”

Additional features add to the “immersion” of the experience. Crew members are unable to interact with any people outside of their teammates. While they have access to internet and can communicate using email and file sharing, the data transfer has a 20 minute delay meant to simulate the effect of communicating across space. Despite this, each of the six crew members has kept a blog about their experience on the HI-SEAS website.

The geodesic dome living space is two stories and only around 1,500 square feet, with six bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen and dining area, a laboratory, a commons and an exercise area.

“[The experiment] was mostly to see what would be the psychological impacts living in that environment,” Nelson said. “See if they started, you know, going after one another, or do you see signs of depression?”

LIVE on #Periscope: Inside the #hiseas habitat https://t.co/KMpRMymncE

— University of Hawaii (@UHawaiiNews) August 28, 2016

Psychology teacher Kelly Horan says that challenges may also arise in the workplace environment.

“I think the bigger issues might come from the interpersonal relationships,” Horan said. “You are not family with these people, you are essentially strangers, and you are thrown in a very small space for a year – I think the interpersonal relationships would probably be the hardest, and the boredom.”

Accounts from the crew themselves seem to agree.

“Bring something to work on. Something meaningful to work on,” crew member Christiane Heinicke said in a video posted to the HI-SEAS Twitter. “One of your biggest enemies is boredom.”

Even still, parts of the experiment may not necessarily correspond to the conditions of travelling to Mars. Actual transit to the planet would last about nine months there and back. In addition to about a year of conducting research, a manned Mars mission could last at least three years.

“While it is an approximation [of Mars], I worry – I’m thinking this idea of being out in space changes you physically, which is also going to change your brain,” Horan said. “Unless you include those variables, it’s really hard to know. You could do it for almost three years here but you still aren’t going to be able to approximate the physical and neurological changes.”

NASA reports that spaceflight can cause loss of bone and body mass, as well as complications resulting from a redistribution of bodily fluids, such as vision and circulation issues and kidney stones. However, the effects of three years of spaceflight are yet unknown.

Astronaut Scott Kelly may help shed light on the answer to this question. Kelly returned from a 340-day mission on the International Space Station on Mar. 1 this year, twice the length of a normal mission. As his identical twin brother, astronaut Mark Kelly, stayed on Earth, they offer a unique opportunity to study the specific effects of prolonged spaceflight on the human body.

“I think [a mission to Mars] is really possible but one of the biggest concerns is to make sure that nothing happens to the astronauts there,” Amla Rashingkar (9) said. “If there are risks, [astronauts should be] well aware of them.”

The HI-SEAS mission also raises questions about that long dreamt-of possibility of establishing a human colony on Mars.

“It’s certainly possible, it’s certainly viable, I think it wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination to actually have a whole colony of people living on Mars,” Arjun Subramaniam (12) said. “That being said, I think that to focus on colonizing a planet that inherently is not habitable for humans starts to distract from the problem of making sure that this planet still remains habitable. I think that focusing on efforts for colonization might sort of distract us from problems of conservation.”
HI-SEAS plans to launch two similar eight-month missions in January 2017 and January 2018 and is currently recruiting new crew members.