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NASA Ends Year-Long Mars Simulation

posted by CoolHand on Tuesday August 30 2016, @11:17PM   
from the looking-for-little-green-men dept.

cubancigar11 writes:

The BBC reports that the year-long simulation of near isolation in preparation for a trip to Mars, has ended successfully.

A team of six people have completed a Mars simulation in Hawaii, where they lived in near isolation for a year.

Since 29 August 2015, the group lived in close quarters in a dome, without fresh air, fresh food or privacy.

[...] The Nasa-funded study run by the University of Hawaii is the longest of its kind since a Russian mission that lasted 520 days.

Having survived their year in isolation, the crew members said they were confident a mission to Mars could succeed.

"I can give you my personal impression which is that a mission to Mars in the close future is realistic," Cyprien Verseux, a crew member from France, told journalists. "I think the technological and psychological obstacles can be overcome."

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Original Submission

• Re:What about (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 31 2016, @01:25AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 31 2016, @01:25AM (#395540)

  Here's a link. [stackexchange.com]

  Basically, we don't really know about Martian gravity in particular, but we do know that microgravity generally does have significant effects on fetal development based on experiments on mice and rats in microgravity.

  There was some research done on embryonic development of mice and rats in microgravity, both impregnated females sent to orbit and later recovered (mostly onboard Space Shuttle, but Russians also sent in orbit similar experiments), and even more frequently by using 3D clinostat to simulate microgravity via continuous three-dimensional rotation. Reduced number of successful full-term pregnancies was observed for females exposed to microgravity during early pregnancy, while fewer abnormal pregnancies for those exposed later. Findings suggest that embryonic stem cells have problems developing normally under microgravity conditions during early pregnancy and result in abnormal fetal development and terminated pregnancy.

  Parent

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