Woman to spend a year in Mars dome

At 3:15 p.m. on Aug. 29, Whitefish resident Carmel Johnston began a year in relative isolation on a barren slope of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii.

The brown, rocky terrain echoes the desert landscape of Mars and serves as the site of the fourth NASA-funded Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) mission, a research project of the University of Hawaii.

Johnston, 26, a soil scientist, is the crew commander of a six-person team.

“It’s going to be an incredible and a really interesting year,” Johnston said during a phone interview Aug. 22, the day before she left.

She chose to spend her last night “on earth” in the company of close friends and family.

For the next 365 days, she will spend her time in the dome referred to as the HI-SEAS Habitat and the crew will have limited communication with the outside world through delayed email.

The dome is 36 feet in diameter with approximately 878 square feet of usable space. The habitat includes the amenities of earthly human life — a kitchen, dining room, bathroom, lab, exercise area and common areas. A steel shipping container attached to the habitat serves as a workshop.

The second-floor loft, measuring 424 square feet, is where the crew sleeps in six small rooms, each just large enough for a bed. Johnston tweeted a photo of her room where the Montana flag is draped above her bed.

“It’s very tight quarters,” Johnston said.

As technology for space travel improves, human factors — namely the group dynamics of living in such tight quarters — may be the true test of a successful manned mission to the Red Planet.

With NASA’s goal of sending a crew to Mars in the 2030s, earthbound missions such as HI-SEAS will provide scientific insight to what kind of living and working environment is necessary within confines of long-duration space travel. The daily routines and health impacts — both physical and mental — are critical to understand when considering a manned mission to Mars.

“We need to understand how to pick crews and how to support crews while they’re on the mission in order for us to get to Mars and back safely,” said HI-SEAS Principal Investigator Kim Binsted during a video interview by the University of Hawaii news service.

“They want to see how we react to different situations,” Johnston said. “It’s valuable research for future trips to Mars or isolation studies. There will be a lot of studies on how we utilize our time and how our mental state is throughout the duration of the mission.”

Johnston described her first impressions of the crew.

“They are very intelligent, group-oriented collaborative people that have a dream and a passion of putting people into space,” Johnston said.

In addition to making sure everyone is healthy and happy as the crew commander, Johnston will be experimenting with food production.

Before joining the Mars simulation, Johnston was a soil scientist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service and spent her summer mapping Glacier National Park soils.

Within the first few days in the HI-SEAS Habitat, Johnston started an aquaponics system to grow vegetables.

“We’re doing research on how different conditions affect growth, so what would be the most efficient way to grow vegetables,” Johnston said. “It will be awesome to have fresh, yummy things that don’t come out of a package or aren’t dehydrated.”

The crew will also get a regular shipment of bulk food every two months.

“They were thinking rather than having astronaut food, what if they sent bulk foods and let the crew cook for themselves,” she said. “It boosts morale to make your own food.”

Crewmembers will conduct different experiments and any time they go outside to collect samples, they have to gear up in space suits.

Johnston’s research entails experimenting with Martian regolith simulant, which mimics the properties of Martian “soil.”

“It’s the closest thing we have on Earth that would be similar to what’s actually on Mars. Regolith is a term for weathered rock material that doesn’t have any life in it,” Johnston said. “We’ll see if we can grow plants in it — which plants need what and how do you get it to them — so when we do go to Mars we can use resources that are there to help plants grow.”

“When we do get to Mars,” is a phrase that Johnston uses throughout the interview.

“It is definitely going to happen in our lifetime,” she said. “We have the resources to do it now. It’s just about making it financially sound. Space research is evolving so quickly that it pays to wait just a bit longer before we go.”

In addition to scientific research and collecting samples from the environment outside, mundane activities of daily life — cooking, showering, exercising — have to be monitored since they are living on solar power.

“We have to limit how much we consume to make sure we have enough energy for the next day,” Johnston said. “We have a treadmill for running, but we can only use it if it’s really sunny outside and if our battery is topped up and we have excess energy to use. And so that goes with cooking, watching videos or charging up our devices.”

While Johnston said she went into the mission with no expectations, she does hope to get “wicked fit.”

“We have an hour of mandatory exercise every day. Astronauts have to maintain density, muscle tone and fitness,” she said.

Does isolation concern Johnston?

“I’ve spent a lot of time by myself or in small groups hiking and working in Glacier. It will not bother me to be out of touch with modern society,” Johnston said, noting she plans to learn the ukulele and catch up reading during downtime.

However, Montana’s hiking and ski seasons will be missed.

“This is such an incredible opportunity — it will be OK,” Johnston said with a laugh.

Science has been a part of Johnston’s life for a long time. The 2007 Whitefish High School graduate said she took to science with ease.

“I always wanted to learn more,” she said.

Being from Montana and having spent time in the remote Arctic studying the effects of permafrost thaw on gas emissions, Johnston believed she was prepared for this type of mission when she read the application.

“Everything in the application was saying, ‘Apply for it,’” Johnston said.

Once Johnston completes the HI-SEAS mission, she has the option to do another one-year mission in 2016 at the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station. Johnston said she wants to get through the first year before deciding to enter into a consecutive year away from friends and family.

If space travel to Mars comes to fruition, however, Johnston doesn’t have an urge to rocket into space.

“I still have a lot of stuff to do here on Earth,” Johnston said.

Her satisfaction comes from helping pave the way for the next generation of astronauts and space travelers.

“It’s interesting because my generation is still very young and everything is happening right now, but it’s the next generation who will be running our ship someday and I want to be able to make any contribution I can to make space travel to Mars happen.”

For more information about the HI-SEAS Mars simulation, visit hi-seas.org.