After a year of fake Mars living, a team of NASA astronauts is ready for the real deal. The crew came out of their simulation on August 28 and lived in near isolation for an entire year. Surviving off space food and boredom, the team of six now leave their volcanic home in Hawaii and prepare to meet aliens.
NASA ASTRONAUTS LIVED IN VOLCANO TO PREPARE FOR MARS AND ALIENS
Next time you complain about sitting in traffic for an hour, think about these six NASA astronauts who had to sit in a volcano for a year. Suddenly, a rush hour doesn’t seem so bad, does it? Now why on Earth would scientists live in a Hawaiian volcano? Well, if you look at pictures of Mauna Loa, you’ll see it’s about as close to Martian terrain as one can get. Inside the volcano, the team lived in a 36-foot-wide dome habitat, similar to the one set up on Mars. Did they prepare for the aliens, though?
NASA ASTRONAUTS WILL GET COZY WITH MARS ALIENS
In case you didn’t know, the journey to Mars is long. Six months each way to be precise. When the NASA astronauts are up there, they will need to wait for two years while the planets realign. This is necessary for a quick trip home. That’s an awfully long time to be on a hostile planet with dangerous aliens. Hence, the need for their volcanic vacation.
NASA ASTRONAUTS FEAR THAT ALIENS WON’T BE THE BIGGEST THREAT ON MARS
Nobody wants an alien invasion on their hands but that’s hardly the only dangerous thing about the red planet. If the isolation alone doesn’t kill these scientists first, they have to worry about a variety of factors. For one, there is the team member, murder scenario a la ‘The Thing’. Then there’s the various equipment malfunctions, Martian dust storms and limited rations running out. It’s certainly not a trip for the faint of heart. Thankfully, they lived in a volcano for a year to prepare.
