Whitefish grad shares experience on Mars mission

What's the first food that runs out when you're on a mission on Mars? The Cheetos.

That's what Carmel Johnston told a group of Whitefish High School students last week. The 2007 Whitefish graduate in August completed a simulated space mission on Mars by spending a year with five other simulated astronauts in a dome at Mauna Loa, one of the five volcanoes that form the Big Island of Hawaii.

“At the end you're left with things like maple syrup,” she told the students of the crew's large food supply.

It was many of the adjustments the crew had to make — no trips to the grocery store, short showers, growing your own food, getting along in cramped quarters. And if you wanted to leave the dome you had to put on a full space suit, a process that takes an hour to put on and an hour to take off.

Johnston was crew commander on the fourth mission for the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS), a year-long Mars simulation operated by the University of Hawaii at Manoa. It was an experience she would have never dreamed off for herself growing up in Whitefish.

She said that's the reason she came to talk to students.

“I hope I can pass the message along that this kind of information helps us make better decisions for the future,” she said after her talk. “Not everyone follows a normal [career] track. I hope I can encourage them to pick a passion and seek out the skills to accomplish it.”

After earning a bachelor's and master's from Montana State University, Johnston worked in Alaska, New Zealand and Glacier National Park before joining HI-SEAS to study food production in an environment like Mars. She went through psychological tests, research applications and personality tests before joining the crew.

The research program since 2013 has been operating long-duration missions to investigate crew composition and cohesion. A crew of six is selected from a pool of 'astronaut-like' candidates and monitored by an experienced Mission Support while they work and live in isolation on the Mars-like northern flank of Mauna Loa on the island of Hawaii.

Johnston explained the mission to students saying that while the crew did conduct scientific experiments, much of the reason the crew was together was to help study the social and psychological aspects of living with six people in a 1,300-square-feet habitat.

“They wanted to see who gets along and how they get along,” she said. “If you have a disagreement how do you move past that. There was lots of data collected about how to select an ideal crew — can you get your work done and be happy while doing it.”
One of the ways Johnston reduced stress was to run on the treadmill. She even competed in the Missoula Marathon in July 2016 from her treadmill in the habitat.

But running on the treadmill caused a thumping of the dome, irritating others inside.
“What helps my stress level increases other people's,” she said. “Then when I was finished it was someone else's turn on the treadmill and I was irritated.”

Members of the crew also had to learn to adapt the way they live their daily lives.  

All communication with Earth was done through email on a 20 minute delay. It would take a minimum of that same time for world event news to reach the crew on Mars.

The habitat dome used solar power and on cloudy days the batteries may not fully charge, forcing the crew to employ power saving strategies such as minimizing cooking and heating.

Showers were extremely limited and water from the showers were collected and reused for water plants or filtered for drinking.

“My parents said I should have done this a long time ago because in high school I always took 20 minute showers,” Johnston said with a laugh. “I was always the first to shower because I didn't mind a cold shower — it was the same as jumping in a lake.”

There were some activities the crew members would have enjoyed at home, like Friday movie night with popcorn. The crew made it through 7 terabytes of movies in the first nine months of the mission, but were sent new movies as they became available.

Johnston spent much of her time focusing on her research about food production. She said Earth is an amazing place that provides the resources of light and water to grow plants, and while Mars can support plant life there are challenges involved. Learning to be creative in making food and cooking in only a toaster oven is also part of the challenge.

She showed students a picture of the homemade mozzarella and bread she made during the experience. She said she spent the whole year craving an avocado.

“It's better to cook your own food rather than eat space food the whole time,” she said. “Eating freeze dried food for a year is tough — anything that's green, even grass, starts to look good.”

Though there were challenges, given the chance Johnston said she would go to Mars. The technology just isn't there yet though, she noted.

“I'm too old to go to Mars and space, but you aren't,” she told students.