Scientists Emerged Out Of Dome On Hawaiian Mountain After A Year Stimulating Mars Mission

Six scientists completed their mission living inside a dome for about a year on the rocky Mauna Loa mountain in Hawaii on Sunday funded by NASA for Mars experiment.

Earlier, a similar Russian mission lasted for 520 days. It was bigger than NASA’s mission run by the University of Hawaii.

The mission, part of the HI-SEAS (Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation) program, was to understand the isolation of a deep space on humans and scientists were only allowed going outside wearing spacesuits.

The six scientists who emerged out of the dome around 9 a.m. local time (3 p.m. ET) after the mission are Carmel Johnston, Christiane Heinicke, Sheyna E. Gifford, Andrzej Stewart, Cyprien Verseux and Tristan Bassingthwaighte. They said, “We are hoping for some sun.”

The mission was 4th and longest HI-SEAS mission to date. The first was 2012 and it lasted just about four months.

HI-SEAS’ principal investigator Kim Binsted said they were looking forward eating fresh produce and getting into ocean.

The scientists were given limited supply of food and other necessary items. They were almost entirely self-sufficient. The routine communications with outer world were delayed by 20minutes to mimic the limitations of communicating with deep space.

The next crews as per the HI-SEAS plans will be sent for eight months at a time in 2017 and 2018.