Want to Pretend to Live on Mars? For a Whole Year? Apply Now
Voice of America
Want to find your inner Matt Damon and spend a year pretending you are isolated on Mars? NASA has a job for you.
To prepare for eventually sending astronauts to Mars, NASA began taking applications Friday for four people to live for a year in Mars Dune Alpha. That's a 1,700-square-foot Martian habitat, created by a 3D-printer, inside a building at Johnson Space Center in Houston. The paid volunteers will simulate a Martian exploration mission complete with spacewalks, limited communications back home, restricted food and resources, and equipment failures. NASA is planning three of these experiments, with the first one starting in fall 2022. Food will all be ready-to-eat space food, and at the moment there are no windows planned in the habitat. Some plants will be grown, but not potatoes as in the movie The Martian. Damon played stranded astronaut Mark Watney, who survived on spuds.
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