For the last two weeks of December, I was a participant in Crew 145 for the Mars Society.
The Mars Society works with entities like NASA and the Musk Foundation to prepare people for long-duration space missions, and to find and solve problems that might arise in such missions before they become dangerous. To this end, they have built two Mars simulation habitats, one in the cold desert of Utah and one in the Canadian arctic. They are building a third one in Iceland.
The simulation goes on 24/7 for two or four weeks (the Arctic habitat will host a year-long simulation next year). TheMars Desert Research Station is a cylinder-shaped structure intended to simulate a Martian lander, and can accommodate up to seven analog astronauts. Next to the structure is a greenhouse, which is currently being replaced with a semi-buried structure that is more accurate to what astronauts are expected to build on the real mission, and a small self-contained observatory. Food, water, electricity and bandwidth are rationed, with internet communications with “home base” being subject to a speed-of-light delay that varies between 6 and 20 minutes. Our rotation was relatively cushy, with 90 seconds of water per day for a shower – to be split between four crewmembers! The crew is given various problems to solve as outlined by each crew’s mission plan, plus of course the occasional issue that arises out of simulation like our water pump breaking and requiring replacement and, at one point, “McGyvering” a hand pump that could be operated with a spacesuit on.
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Technology is advancing at rapid rates, thanks to increasing capabilities of computers, the ability to share knowledge via the internet, and the growing adoption rate of robotic driven technologies such as 3D printing. The culmination of these advancements has led to exploration outside of the Earth’s atmosphere.
This idea has led a group of researchers at MarsWithoutBorders (MWOB) to begin testing the feasibility of 3D printing surgical tools for telesurgery on Mars. The project, led by the Founder of MWOB, and Commander of MWOB Expedition One Crew 145, Susan Ip Jewell, MD, and MWOB Crew Engineer, Matteo K. Borri took place in a Mars Analog Simulation at Mars Desert Research Station situated in a remote desert location in Utah.

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