A group of six people, a French astrobiologist, American pilot, journalist, doctor, American pilot, architect and soil scientists, will stay at Hawaii's Mauna Loa volcano for one year as part of NASA's program to simulate a manned mission to Mars, The Independent reports.
The six volunteers will live together in a 36-foot-wide, 20-foot-tall abode named HI-SEAS, which means short for Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation. This is the longest pseudo Mars expedition so far. Two previous teams have already spent four and eight months in the dome in the past.
Each group member will have a tiny room with enough space for desk and sleeping cot. They can only move out of the room in a spacesuit. They will survive on canned tune and powdered cheese.
"I think one of the lessons is that you really can't prevent interpersonal conflicts. It is going to happen over these long-duration missions, even with the very best people," HI-SEAS chief investigator Kim Binsted told BBC.
"But what you can do is help people be resilient so they respond well to the problems and can resolve them and continue to perform well as a team," it was further emphasized.
Cameras and body movement trackers will monitor every movement of the six volunteers.
The experiments aid NASA to know the kind of conflicts that can arise from having to live together with very little privacy in such a small space.
University of Hawaii Manoa researchers will monitor the group's cohesion in the NASA-funded study.
