HI-SEAS IV Mission to SMARS

In all the news over the past couple days, we haven't heard hardly anything about a historic space travel achievement: The start of a year-long mission to SMARS.

That's not a typo. "Smars" stands for "simulated Mars," and this simulation takes place on the side of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii. It's in a rocky, high-altitude, and isolated spot to help make SMars like the real thing. This particular mission is called HI-SEAS IV (it stands for Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation). Three HI-SEAS missions have run before, but this one is by far the longest and the most intensive.

Source: Buzzfeed

Imagine living in extremely close quarters with five strangers - who, by the way, are your new coworkers and the only people you get to see for the next year. Imagine that your only window to the outside is a "viewscreen" that shows Earth as a distant blue marble. Imagine little, if any, natural sunlight - and living your life according to what's Mars daytime and Mars nighttime. Imagine a year of astronaut food, but no fresh air. Imagine going through all of this while a group of scientists watch and record your every move.

On the earlier missions, crew members have worked on NASA projects, and kept healthy by "cooking" and doing yoga. The simulator has only the tools they'll have in space - which the astronauts (earthstronauts?) have used to repair their space suits (and yes, they have to wear space suits ANY time the leave the station). The HI-SEAS IV team will also be learning Russian, which, according to their blog (a great read!) is the "second language of space."

When NASA tries sending humans to Mars (I'm pretty convinced it's a when, not an if), it'll take the crew a long time to reach the Red Planet. And they'll be tasked with building a small society upon their arrival - a monumentally difficult task, not to mention an expensive one - so we've got a vested interest in making sure these first Martians arrive to their new home in good shape.

Sometimes it seems like NASA is the only part of the federal government that's innovating at a high level. They're scientists, not bureaucrats - the former moves humans forward, and the latter generally holds them back. The HI-SEAS IV crew is doing something remarkable: Each of these six people donated a year of their lives to chasing a human achievement:

Carmel Johnston
Christiane Heinicke
Sheyna Gifford
Tristan Bassingthwaighte
Andrzej Stewart
Cyprien Verseux


I hope you'll join me in wishing them the very best during their mission. We'll see them on August 28, 2016!