Montanans Spend a Year on Mars – at Least, About the Closest Thing to It
Carmel Johnston didn’t realize other people might consider her a “neat freak” until she spent a year on Mars.
OK, in reality, Johnston never got closer than about 47 million miles to the Red Planet.
But the year the Whitefish High School graduate recently spent living in a small geodesic dome, with five other people, on the largest volcano on this planet – well, it’s about the closest thing to Mars that an Earth-bound human can experience.
They even had to put on space suits every time they ventured outside the dome into the barren landscape.
Johnston and Tristan Bassingthwaighte, a Missoula Sentinel grad, were part of the latest NASA-funded, University of Hawaii-run HI-SEAS mission to study how an extended stay on Mars might affect a space flight crew.
“The geo dome is not an actual life support system,” says Johnston, a soil scientist who served as crew commander. “But the study was on the social and psychological aspects of isolation, not the technology of living on Mars.”
On Aug. 28, 2015, she and the other five crew members moved into the 1,300-square-foot dome located 8,000 feet above sea level on the desolate northern slope of Mauna Loa, on the Big Island of Hawaii.
They didn’t leave for 366 days.
Read the full story here.
Topics: News
