![]() After getting cleaned up we have breakfast and tag up, discussing the coming day's tasks and needs, and answering any outstanding queries from the day before. We start the day around 06:00 by weighing ourselves right after we get up, as the scientists running the simulation want to collect as much data as possible and also make sure we are staying healthy. We call these EVAs or extravehicular activities where we go, we go outside the habitat and walk around on "Mars" and perform different task that you would expect are needed to keep a Martian base running and sometimes utilize virtual reality, which is really fun and very beautiful. I will give an example from a day that we go out onto the Martian surface. Haston: A day in the life is a hard one as mentioned previously, we have a fair bit of variety. (Image credit: NASA)ĬS: What is a typical day for you now? Can you give us a brief "day-in-the-life" of an analog Mars mission crew member? The "Mars Dune Alpha" habitat includes a 1,200-square-foot (111-square-meter), enclosed Mars "sandbox" for Mars-walks. Related: The 9 coolest mock space missions However, the team works really well together, and we dropped into daily schedule and work norms fairly quickly, so I think we had a routine fairly quickly, and by the second week we felt fairly good about the schedule and completing our daily mission goals in an efficient manner. Haston: I am not sure that the initial excitement has fully worn off we are still often doing new things each week and learning a great deal. On our first day we did all of those things but also took the opportunity to inventory the items in the habitat, as it was important for us to know where everything is, but also to make sure that the items we thought were sent with us were indeed present and report discrepancies to mission control.ĬS: How long was it before the initial excitement of a new experience wore off - if, indeed, it has - and you settled into a routine? Additionally, we document all food and liquids we ingest. We also have specified exercise that we complete and document on days when we are not leaving the habitat to do work on the Martian surface. This means we are often troubleshooting issues on our own while waiting for mission control to get back to us with additional information. ![]() Due to the time delay, we have learned to be prepared ahead of time, as if you figure out something is wrong, or missing, at the start of a task, it will take over 30 minutes for that to be communicated to mission control and for us to hear back with a solution. When there are problems or changes to the schedule, we alert mission control of these in the mission log. This both helps keep us on schedule and also lets mission control know that we have completed tasks. ![]() Our activities are tracked using an interactive app that provided prompts and document links to the things we are scheduled to do. The next day we had a full day of tasks set up for us. That first night we spent time unpacking our gear and setting up our bedrooms, then we had a celebratory hot chocolate. It made the crowd watching the ingress laugh, and then we heard them cheer for us. Kelly Haston: We were so happy upon ingress to the habitat that as soon as we got through the door and it closed, we formed a spontaneous group hug and let out a big cheer. (Image credit: NASA)ĬollectSPACE (cS): Thinking back to June 25 and your first day in the habitat, can you recount your first 24 hours inside? NASA's Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog Mission 1 crew, from left: science officer Anca Selariu, flight engineer Ross Brockwell, commander Kelly Haston and medical officer Nathan Jones, with their mission flag outside of Mars Dune Alpha. ![]()
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