Four small rooms, a gym and a lot of red sand -- NASA unveiled on April 11 its new Mars-simulation habitat, in which volunteers will live for a year at a time to test what life will be like on future missions to Earth's neighbor.
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A recreational area
The facility, created for three planned experiments called the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA), is located at the US space agency's massive research base in Houston, Texas.
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A working area
Four volunteers will begin the first trial this summer, during which NASA plans to monitor their physical and mental health to better understand humans' fortitude for such a long isolation.
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An oxygen generator system
With that data, NASA will better understand astronauts' "resource use" on Mars, said Grace Douglas, lead researcher on the CHAPEA experiments.
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1,700 square-foot home
The volunteers will live inside a 1,700 square-foot (160 square-meter) home, dubbed 'Mars Dune Alpha,' which includes two bathrooms, a vertical farm to grow salad, a room dedicated to medical care, an area for relaxing and several workstations. An airlock leads to an 'outdoor' reconstruction of the Martian environment -- though still located inside the hangar.
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Another special feature
Researchers will regularly test the crew's response to stressful situations, such as restricting water availability or equipment failures. The habitat has another special feature: it was 3D-printed.