Gadgetory

yeah no one ever said space was graceful no it really is okay wasn't okay a human mission to Mars won't be quick a full trip to the red planet could potentially last up to two and a half years that means Martian crew members will be spending a lot of time together isolated from Earth so NASA wants to know what kind of traits a person will need to be an ideal Mars astronaut the best way to figure that out send people to Mars before you send people to Mars it's taken us about an hour to get to the meeting place where we're meeting the people from high seas and then it's gonna take us another hour to get to the high seas habitat and our ears are definitely copy let's get higher and higher we're on our way to high seas an analogue Mars habitat run by the University of Hawaii and funded by NASA it's located on the state's Big Island and getting there does feel a bit like traveling to Mars there are plenty of remote locations on earth so why pick Hawaii well it has to do with the terrain not the beaches or green valleys though Pisces is located on the side of an active volcano Mauna Loa what's great about the geology out here is it's actually pretty similar to what we might find on Mars thanks to past volcanic activity on the planet this area we're about 7,000 feet on Mauna lower right now is very very similar to the surface of a young Mars and since Mars hasn't had much in the way of erosion over the years is not all that different from the surface of current Mars what are the some of the things that you are specifically testing for you know the data that you're collecting and how are you giving that to NASA and translating that for them one of the focuses what NASA is funding us to do here is to really look at crew dynamics so how do you pick a crew how do you pick individuals how do you put them together into a crew so that they'll work really well over these long-duration missions because as I'm sure you've seen maybe on a camping trip there's some groups that work really well over a long weekend but maybe you wouldn't want to spend two and a half years is the camping trip on a weekend in my apartment so welcome to the habitat home sweet home so this area is the reconfigurable area so they can move things around here it's where they do most of their work it's where they exercise it's where they socialize really a lot of stuff happens I'm missing a typical day in the habitat consists of analyzing samples writing reports fieldwork what Mars astronauts would probably do each person has their own bedroom though it's not very big there's also cooking with mostly non-perishable items and just general free time to fill like reading books or watching movies it didn't look like a very glamorous life though so I decided to ask someone who'd lived it meet Annie Meyer she's a research test engineer at NASA who spent four months at high seas back in 2014 the crew was an international crew from all over the world we were from all different upbringings and we all met fundamental credentials to be on the mission but I would say just like any family that's the locks up in a house too long you have some disagreements or different approaches of how you solve a problem and so if things ever did become an issue we were pretty good about trying to immediately extinguish an issue right away and talking about it cuz you can't just walk out the front door and go for a walk you know like you're bad for you yeah so we can only take showers we had about what was it ten minutes of shower water per crewmember per week and we were working out I'm sorry per week yeah so we were working out every day around simulating reduced gravity so a couple hours of sweating and working out or if you went you put on that big spacesuit and you've got all sweaty you know you can't take a very long shower so I definitely missed you know modern plumbing but you made it work speaking of modern plumbing the toilets also don't have any have you seen in the movie the Martian I have you might remember that growing in compost was a fairly central part Nigerian call yeah well our crews to have composting toilets and the microbial community that lives in the toilet turns your deposit into nice clean compost oh well that's lovely so you're kind of living with it for a while you are and you're highly motivated to keep that microbial community happy and healthy making matters worse all electronic communication in and out of the habitat is delayed by twenty minutes each way that's roughly how long it would take for a radio signal to travel the distance from Mars to earth though timing will vary depending on the planets orbits so getting a reply from someone on earth could take up to forty minutes yeah I was stressful if things were going bad back home and you got an email yeah you know you can't do anything about it you know everyone had their own personal lives continuing without them friends were celebrating milestones and you're here you know doing the simulated Mars mission and if you want to go for a stroll the only way to go outside the habitat is to suit up just like you would have to on Mars the thing is Martian astronauts won't be spending that much time roaming around the surface Mars's atmosphere is much thinner than Earth so it provides a little protection from deep space radiation either from incoming solar flares or cosmic rays stemming from outside the galaxy so rather than leave the habitats all the time to get new samples astronauts are going to want to send out recon missions first to study the landscape the best way to do that a radiation hardened Rover and we've got just the thing you want to minimize the amount of time that humans spend outside a protected habitat so what you do is you send the Rover out to scout the location see what's around if you have a special area that you're interested in send the rover take images take soil samples bring it back and then once you've identified which are the key location see if you want to send humans there too to follow up then they don't be there's not gonna be wasting time trying to find a location it's already pre identified by the road I had some fun cruising with the rover outside but in reality astronauts aren't going to be anywhere near the vehicle when they operate it do five more degrees okay those elusive Martians it's a tedious process operating the rover from the control center it involves typing in commands to enter the rover forward or tilt the cameras ever so slightly to get that perfect picture of a rock or passing your driver's test it's like being sixteen all over again so one thing I'm learning here is that you really need a lot of patience to accomplish any task on Mars yes everything is done very slowly there's certain time delays involved the instrumentation you're carrying onboard is delicate it's expensive so yeah you don't want to rush things right it's like I say even though right now hello Lonnie moves really slow it's ten times faster than curiosity it just goes to show that Martian astronauts will be spending a lot of time inside cooped up with not much room to roam around and with the same people around you at all times it's not going to be like a vacation it's going to be an extreme environment that most can't handle but that's why high seas exists so that NASA can figure out what it will be like and to find the people who can handle it hey everyone thanks so much for watching if you enjoyed this video and want more space content you should check out our new YouTube channel verge science see you there