The year-long mission to a simulated Mars ended late last month, as the six participating scientists stepped out of their habitation and for the time in a seeming eon, breathed in the fresh Hawaii air atop Earth's largest volcano.The moment was captured by filmmakers Lauren DeFilippo and Katherine Gorringe, who are working on a documentary about the mission, Red Heaven. (They're currently in the final laps of a crowdfunding effort on Kickstarter). The film, a "passion project," closely follows the six participants of NASA's HI-SEAS mission as they struggle to live together inside a two-story, 1,500-square-foot dome, at an elevation of 8,000 feet on the slope of Mauna Loa, powered by the sun and batteries, limited food supplies, and a determination to pave the way for future Martian explorers.
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To capture all the ins and outs, DeFilippo and Gorringe gave the scientists cameras and specific instructions, an arrangement not unlike that of other space documentaries, like this year's A Beautiful Planet. Life on fake Mars wasn't easy: in addition to simulated emergencies, boredom, personal tensions, and problems with the bathroom all added stress to (and generated valuable data from) the longest such simulation so far: previous HI-SEAS missions lasted around four months each, and the last was eight months long.Read about the challenges of that mission (part of Dan Oberhaus' series on Earth-bound space simulations), and watch this brief peek into the most recent mission's life in a bubble on the side of a volcano.Planning and recruitment for the next two eight-month HI-SEAS missions is already underway. NASA plans to send humans to real Mars by 2030.
Watch more: Motherboard's documentary about life on Mars in Utah