The Utah landscape that’s being used as a stand-in for Mars. Each crew member is allotted one 90-second shower every three days. They gather in a small common area to eat breakfast – usually a surprisingly edible meal made with dehydrated food, bacteria cultures and harvested greenhouse plants – and watch the sunrise through portholes. They wake each morning in bedrooms slightly larger than coffins. And, in a sense, the crew members are the research.įor two or three weeks, they live like Martians. Yet hundreds of people from around the world apply for the chance to come to the remote wilderness of south-east Utah and pretend to colonize Mars.Ĭrews at the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) conduct research to understand what humans may face when visiting or settling the red planet.
I t is hard to imagine that anyone would volunteer to live with five semi-strangers in a tin can in the desert. Everyone relaxes.Īfter a beat, Pokrywka asks: “Did I win my Oscar?”
They get Pokrywka inside and on to the ground and remove her helmet. They run toward the Hab, maneuver her body into the cramped airlock, and begin the countdown all over again.Ī crew member inside, Kay Sandor, holds a timer against the airlock window: “Five … four … three … two …” If they don’t, they may be torn apart when they step into Mars’s thin atmosphere.Īfter the agonizing wait ends, the rescue party rushes to Pokrywka and rolls her on to the stretcher. They must wait five painstaking minutes for the air pressure to adjust. Two don spacesuits, grab a stretcher and enter the airlock. The three crew members inside begin emergency protocols. Robert Turner, the crew’s medical officer, radios the Hab: “Astronaut down, astronaut down!” The Hab is only a few dozen yards away, but Pokrywka can’t seem to go further. “Aga, are you all right?” the crew’s commander, Sionade Robinson, asks. As they head back to the station, one astronaut, Aga Pokrywka, begins acting strangely.
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